How the standard works in practice
The producer completes a single declaration form, filed alongside chain of title. The classification it records is intended to travel with the film from there, through the licences, deal memos, and delivery notes that follow.
Process overview
Finance & risk
Funders, completion bond companies, and E&O insurers. Pre-production is when your HPF requirement should be set, not at delivery.
- Funders: require an HPF disclosure document as part of your financing agreement.
- Completion bond companies: assess planned AI tool use as part of pre-bond due diligence. An undisclosed AI use identified post-bond may represent a material risk factor.
- E&O insurers: engage at pre-production rather than delivery. Planned use flagged early leads to a cleaner coverage assessment and fewer surprises at the claims stage.
Supply side
The producer declares. The classification is filed with deal documentation from that point on.
Before cameras roll
Starting HPF before production begins makes the final declaration straightforward and complete.
- Decide how you will apply HPF before principal photography. Every decision about AI tool use is then made with disclosure in mind from the outset.
- Include HPF inventory requirements in your agreements with post houses and VFX studios. Require a written record of AI tools used as part of their contract. These vendors hold the most complete records, and building the requirement into the contract is far more effective than requesting it at delivery.
- Brief department heads at the start of production. They need to know that AI tool use will be recorded and that they are responsible for surfacing it.
- For co-productions: agree which entity completes and signs the declaration before shooting begins. Each producing entity may submit separately for their portion.
When included in your agreements, it works as a warranty, the same way you confirm rights ownership or clearances. In practice it's three tick-boxes, a brief description of any AI tools used, and a signature. A template is available to download if you don't want to produce your own.
All three categories are expected outcomes. The form captures how AI was used and makes no judgement about whether it should have been.
If you have no sales agent, submit the form directly with your delivery materials.
Before you sign
- Cover every stage of production, not just principal photography: development, shoot, post, subtitling, and localisation.
- Collect any outstanding records from departments and vendors. If you set HPF requirements at contract stage, this should be straightforward.
- You do not need to submit this review with the form. Keep it on file as substantiation if the declaration is ever questioned.
Include it with every subsequent licence. Producers can send the form without waiting to be asked. For films acquired mid-production, ask the producer to complete the form before the first licence is issued. If an agreement is already signed, add it by side letter or schedule amendment.
Demand side
The classification arrives with delivery. There is no obligation to display it. Whether and how it reaches audiences is each party's decision.
If acquiring directly from a producer without a sales agency, the form comes from the producer and their warranty is the sole representation. Where no declaration is received, request the form before completing acquisition. Note that a producer's own signed declaration and a sales agency's written confirmation that one is held on file are not equivalent. See the FAQ for detail.
Options include a label, a content filter, content information pages, EPG listings, programme notes, or broadcast credits. The classification has three values: No AI Used, Assistive AI, and Generative AI. There is no fourth value for undisclosed films; where no declaration is present, treat the film as undisclosed under your own content policy.
Technical integration
For platform engineers, CMS and catalogue developers, ingest system developers, and C2PA SDK developers.
The classification arrives as a signed producer declaration in the chain of title, not from content analysis. Your platform or content operations team translates it into two schema fields at ingest and stores it against the title record. The paper declaration is the authoritative record; the schema is how it travels in technical systems. If your platform runs independent AI detection, that's a separate signal: it should not override or backfill an HPF value.
Schema (v0.9, stable):
{
"hpf_taxonomy_version": "0.9",
"hpf_classification": "no_ai" | "assistive_ai" | "generative_ai"
}Both fields are required when an HPF record is present. Where no declaration exists, omit the record and let ingest proceed: do not block on absence, do not write null values, and do not default to no_ai. An absent record and a declared no_ai are not the same thing. Flag major version increments (e.g. 0.x to 1.0) for manual review; minor increments are clarifications only.
A draft C2PA custom assertion (hpf.film.ai_disclosure) is proposed for carrying the classification in a Content Credential. It sits alongside c2pa.actions, not in place of it: c2pa.actions is per-file, HPF is per-production. The assertion payload is stable at v0.9; the label may change before the C2PA working group discussion closes, so do not build verification logic against it yet. The signing trust infrastructure isn't in place, so assertions can't be verified by standard C2PA validators. If you're already implementing C2PA manifests, get in touch before the mapping is finalised.
Film files are transcoded repeatedly across the distribution chain and C2PA manifests don't survive it. Use a durable external manifest (sidecar or manifest store) bound to the asset via a cryptographic hash of the received master file.
Full schema, proposed C2PA mapping, and implementation guide: GitHub repository
Audience display
How the classification might appear to audiences. There is no prescribed format: platforms, broadcasters, and festivals choose whether and how to surface it.