The AI content problem has attracted a lot of smart solutions. Most of them are focused on the wrong thing.

The premise behind initiatives like Adobe's Content Authenticity Initiative, and the C2PA technical standard it co-founded with Microsoft, the BBC, and others, is that trust begins with provenance. Attach tamper-resistant metadata to a piece of content. Record who made it, what tools were used, whether AI was involved. Give the audience a way to verify the origin. The EU AI Act takes this further, mandating machine-readable labeling of AI-generated content for all platforms operating in Europe by August 2026. Meta has been adding AI-generated content labels since 2024. Twilio built an open-source "AI Nutrition Facts" label for enterprise software that healthcare systems and research institutions have since adopted.

The intention is right. The assumption underneath it is worth questioning.

Nobody Actually Reads Nutritional Labels

This is not a metaphor. Studies consistently show that a large majority of consumers rarely or never check nutritional information before purchasing food. They evaluate by other signals: brand, appearance, how the product made them feel last time. The label exists for the people who need it. Most people don't need it.

The same logic applies to digital content. The buyers and decision-makers consuming your thought leadership aren't stopping to check the metadata. They aren't asking "was this made by a human?" They're asking three different questions entirely.

The Questions Buyers Are Actually Asking

Does this person understand my problem? Do they actually know what they're talking about? Do I feel their genuine investment in this topic?

I've come to call these the 3 E's: empathy, expertise, and enthusiasm. [Link to full piece.] And after years of thinking about what makes B2B content earn attention, I've come to believe these three things describe what an audience receives, not how content was produced.

That's a meaningful distinction. A post built from genuine human ideas, shaped by real experience, and refined with AI assistance can land with full empathy, credibility, and energy. A post typed entirely by a human, but hollow, generic, and disconnected from the reader's actual reality, can leave a buyer colder than ever.

The production method doesn't determine the experience. The authenticity of the ideas does.

The Credential That Actually Matters

This is where the nutritional label movement is focused on the wrong end of the equation. It's building infrastructure to answer "how was this made?" when buyers are asking "is this worth my time?" Those are different questions. Organizations that optimize for the first while neglecting the second are building a very verifiable case for why their content isn't resonating.

The real credential isn't a C2PA signature. It's a consistent, visible track record of perspective that your audience has learned to trust over time. A body of work that demonstrates you understand their world, that you've earned the right to have opinions about it, and that you care enough to say something true rather than something safe.

That can't be faked. Not by AI, and not by a label.

Build for the question your buyers are actually asking. The credentials will take care of themselves.