What I'm getting at is that metadata that claims that a photo is "real" won't necessarily convince people that it is, and the lack of that metadata doesn't mean anything at all. About the only real use I've seen for C2PA is to confirm that an image bearing that metadata is AI-generated - and that marker is easily lost through editing or retransmission.

I'm not saying it's an easy problem or that this is the right solution. I'm saying it's a valuable problem and so they are trying this solution.

Yeah we live in the era of alternative facts and this is just more, at best, "fact checking"

It is (not sure I agree, but I can see how one would think this) but you're not going to solve it like this

And it's very real problem to workaround (aka, hack the device into faking the signature).

Why? An image should never be proof of anything, by itself.

What should be sufficient proof for you that AI wont fake trivially?