Sir Nick Clegg – the politician turned Meta executive – says the lines between human and “synthetic content” is becoming “blurred”, as the social media giant announced it would label all AI images on its platforms.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, has already been placing “Imagined with AI” labels on photorealistic images created using its own Meta AI feature.
The tech giant said it is now building “industry-leading tools” that will allow it to identify invisible markers on images generated by artificial intelligence that have come from other sites such as Google, OpenAI, Microsoft or Adobe.
Meta has said it will roll out the labelling on Facebook, Instagram and Threads in the coming months.
Sir Nick, the UK’s former deputy prime minster who is now Meta’s president of global affairs, wrote in a statement that the move comes during a year when a “number of important elections are taking place around the world”.
He added: “During this time, we expect to learn much more about how people are creating and sharing AI content, what sort of transparency people find most valuable, and how these technologies evolve. What we learn will inform industry best practices and our own approach going forward.”
Sir Nick said the move is important at a time when “the difference between human and synthetic content” is becoming “blurred”.
Meta says it has been working with “industry partners on common technical standards for identifying AI content”, adding that it will be able to label AI-generated images when its technology detects “industry standard indicators”.
The company says the labels will come in “all languages”.
Sir Nick has said it’s not yet possible for Meta to identify all AI-generated content – with those who produce the images able to strip out invisible markers.
He added: “We’re working hard to develop classifiers that can help us to automatically detect AI-generated content, even if the content lacks invisible markers. At the same time, we’re looking for ways to make it more difficult to remove or alter invisible watermarks.”
Sir Nick said this part of Meta’s work is important because the use of AI is “likely to become an increasingly adversarial space in the years ahead”.
An AI-generated image of Elon Musk. Pic: Full Fact
“People and organisations that actively want to deceive people with AI-generated content will look for ways around safeguards that are put in place to detect it. Across our industry and society more generally, we’ll need to keep looking for ways to stay one step ahead,” he said.
Meta also plans to add a feature to its platform that will allow people to disclose when they are sharing AI-generated content so the company can add a label to it.
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