IPTC Digital Source Type describes the way media was created. IPTC says to apply a term identifier, not merely a display label, to the field. It is an IPTC Extension field embedded in XMP as Iptc4xmpExt:DigitalSourceType.
Relevant controlled-vocabulary values
trainedAlgorithmicMedia- Media made algorithmically with an AI model trained on captured content.
algorithmicMedia- Media made by an algorithm without sampled training data.
compositeSynthetic- A composite with at least one generative-AI element.
Why the Google-workflow checker is stricter
IPTC describes compositeSynthetic as meaningful for a composite. Google’s generative-AI image guidance, however, names TrainedAlgorithmicMedia. Declared Image therefore reports compositeSynthetic and algorithmicMedia as declared values but marks them inconsistent for this narrow Google-workflow preflight.
What the field cannot prove
The field is a declaration inside a file. It is not proof that an image was or was not generated by AI, and it does not establish legal status or Merchant Center acceptance. Use it as inspectable workflow evidence alongside the source file and your own review.
Inspect one local imageRead the policy boundary
Primary source: IPTC Photo Metadata Standard 2025.1. Retrieved in the P0 source record on 2026-08-14.