ChronoVerify update, July 18, 2026: two new plans, an Article 50 marking checker, and richer reports
One day since the last update, and this one is about access: two new plans that fill the gap between pay as you go and Business, a new free tool for the EU AI Act deadline that is now fifteen days out, and signed reports that finally show you the image they describe. Everything here is live.
What shipped
Two new plans: Starter and Evidence
The self-serve ladder had a hole in it: after the free 100 a month and $5 pay-as-you-go credits, the next rung was Business at $99. Two plans now fill it. Starter is $19 a month for 7,500 verifications, the volume tier; signed PDF reports on Starter are billed from your credit balance at $0.20 each. Evidence is $25 a month for 2,500 verifications with signed, timestamped PDF audit reports drawn from the same included quota, the tier for anyone whose deliverable is the report itself: investigators, adjusters, and compliance workflows. Both are subscribe-and-go on the pricing page, your key appears on screen right after checkout, and you can switch or cancel any plan yourself from the billing portal. Existing customers and prices are untouched.
A free Article 50 marking checker
The EU AI Act's transparency obligations apply from August 2, 2026, and Article 50(2) expects providers of generative AI systems to mark their outputs in a machine-readable format. The new Article 50 marking checker examines one image for exactly that marking: a C2PA Content Credential, cryptographically validated against the official C2PA and CAI trust lists, and the IPTC digital source type declaration (such as trainedAlgorithmicMedia, the code for content created by generative AI), whether it appears inside a signed manifest or in plain XMP metadata. Free, no signup, nothing retained.
The honest boundaries are printed on the page. This is a marking check, not an AI detector: absence of marking proves nothing, because marking is commonly stripped by resizing, re-saving, screenshots, and most social platforms. A declaration in plain XMP without a Content Credential is editable metadata, not proof. And under the AI Omnibus package adopted in June 2026, generative systems already on the market have until December 2, 2026 to meet the marking requirement, so check the current state of the law rather than treating August 2 as a universal cliff.
Signed reports now show the image, and explain every verdict
Two things a first-time reader of a ChronoVerify report asked for, reasonably: what image is this about, and what do the verdict words mean? Reports now open with a colored verdict banner, embed a rendering of the analyzed image labeled visual reference only, and include a verdict scale table that defines all five verdicts in one sentence each, with the returned verdict highlighted. The rendering is for orientation; the evidence remains the original file, identified by the SHA-256 fingerprint the Ed25519 signature covers, with the RFC 3161 trusted timestamp from yesterday's update anchoring the record in time.
The verifier now previews your photo
Drop a photo on the free verifier and you now see a small preview beside the verdict. The preview is drawn by your own browser from the file you selected; it is never uploaded for display, never stored, and never served back by us. The check itself still processes the image in memory and retains nothing, and shareable verdict links still contain the verdict only, never the photo.
Smaller changes worth a line each
- An API link in every nav. Developers looking for the API found only a Docs link; every page now carries both.
- chronoverify-mcp 0.1.6. The MCP server's signed-report tool now describes the embedded RFC 3161 timestamp token, and the hosted and npm versions report the same number.
- Error messages that name the real fix. A Starter customer refused a report is now told reports draw from the credit balance on that plan, instead of a misleading out-of-quota message.
- More verification capacity. The concurrency ceiling was raised after live load testing, so bursts that previously shed a request or two now serve cleanly.
What has not changed
The boundaries hold. ChronoVerify is not an AI-image detector and does not claim to be; it validates provenance and reads the evidence a file actually carries. A clean verdict is triage, not proof a scene is real. The pipeline is deterministic: the same file returns the same verdict, and no language model scores your image. The free verifier stays free, a free API key covers 100 verifications a month with no card, and pay as you go stays at $0.003 per image with a $5 minimum top-up.
The full ladder is live: free, pay as you go, Starter, Evidence, Business, Scale. Keys appear on screen right after checkout.
See pricingCommon questions
Which plan should I pick?
Volume first: Starter, $19 for 7,500 verifications a month, with signed reports billed from your credit balance at $0.20 each. Reports first: Evidence, $25 for 2,500 verifications with signed, timestamped PDF reports drawn from the same included quota. Higher volume: Business at $99 for 50,000 or Scale at $299 for 200,000, both with reports included. The free tier and $0.003 pay as you go are unchanged.
Does the Article 50 marking checker detect AI images?
No. It checks one file for the machine-readable marking Article 50 expects providers to apply: a validated C2PA Content Credential and the IPTC digital source type declaration. Absence of marking is not evidence an image is or is not AI-generated, and the page says so.
Is the image shown in the signed report the evidence?
No. The embedded picture is a re-encoded rendering labeled visual reference only, so a reader can see what the report is about. The evidence is the original file, identified by the SHA-256 fingerprint the Ed25519 signature covers. Verify any copy by hashing it and comparing.
Does the verifier preview upload my photo somewhere?
No. The preview is drawn by your own browser from the file you selected, using a local object URL. The server processes the image in memory for the check and retains nothing, and it never serves the image back. Shareable verdict links contain the verdict only, never the photo.
When does Article 50 apply?
The transparency obligations apply from August 2, 2026. Under the AI Omnibus package adopted in June 2026, generative AI systems already on the market before that date have until December 2, 2026 to meet the machine-readable marking requirement, and the European Commission's implementing guidelines are still pending.
Sources and further reading: EU AI Act Article 50; IPTC digital source type vocabulary; C2PA Specifications; ChronoVerify pricing; the method and limits.