Provenance
also known as: observed vs inferred
The record of how a capture was acquired and how each claim about it is known. Observed facts are read directly from the surface; inferred ones are estimates and must be flagged as such with a confidence score — a UI model label is never silently equated with an official model ID. Provenance covers the acquisition lane, login state, region requested versus effective, delivered fidelity, and whether the surface was present at all.
In AI Search API
provenance is a required Envelope section: a driver structurally cannot return a capture without one. model carries { providerId, observedLabel, inferred, confidence } so attribution guesses are visible; region records requested vs effective; fan-out carries its own observed/inferred/none flag. What was seen and what was guessed stay distinguishable forever.
"provenance": {
"model": {
"providerId": "gpt-4o-2024-08-06",
"observedLabel": "GPT-4o",
"inferred": false,
"confidence": 0.99
},
"region": { "requested": "US", "effective": "US" }
}Related terms
See it in the product
Every definition here is enforced in the Envelope contract — run a capture and read the fields yourself.