Apple announced Apple Reference Image, a new feature for iPhone 18 Pro that embeds a unique ID in photo metadata to prove an image was captured by an iPhone camera rather than generated by AI. Unlike Google's SynthID, which embeds signals in pixels, Apple's approach stores provenance data in metadata and sends telemetry to Private Cloud Compute to create a signature tied to the specific device. The feature functions as a digital receipt photographers can use to verify image authenticity against AI-altered versions circulating online.