Since April 2024, Meta has started labeling content on its platforms Instagram, Facebook and Threads to indicate whether its been crafted using artificial intelligence.
This move's aim was to enhance transparency and trust in Meta’s programs, and also to try and combat the spread of misinformation in the run up to the U.S presidential elections.
All well and good, yes?
Well no sadly. Meta are going to have to go back to the drawing board with this one, as users have found that the ‘made with AI’ tag is being applied to content that is innocent of AI as most people understand it.
Even minor Photoshop edits are being flagged as AI generated, causing disgruntled artists and photographers to complain.
The rules according to Instagram’s help center are predictably unclear:
“Content that is created or edited using Meta's AI tools and shared to Instagram as a post, story or reel may automatically be labelled as ‘AI" content above or on the content, or in some cases with a visible watermark that says "Imagined with AI’.”
They continue:
“Content that is detected to have industry-standard signals indicating that it's generated by AI will be labelled as "Made with AI". This includes content that is created or edited using third-party AI tools. It also includes content that is created using Meta's AI tools, downloaded and then uploaded to Instagram.”
They then say that if your post needs but has not been given a ‘Made with AI’ label, it's your responsibility to do so, and that not all content that is generated with AI will have a label.
So essentially we’re back to square one with a flawed system we can’t trust, as artists' touch ups are causing their entire work to be branded fake, and potentially significant uses of AI are slipping through gaps, relying on human honesty to point it out.
One hilarious example came from photographer Peter Yan, whose photograph of Mount Fuji in Japan was labeled ‘Made with AI’ after he used a generative AI tool to remove a trash can.
Matt Growcoot had the same issue after he removed a spec of dust from a photograph he took in Türkiye using an AI tool in Photoshop.
The world is still figuring out how to recognize and handle AI, but arguably, simply mentioning that something has been made with AI is fairly useless unless we know exactly how and how much.
When AI models and influencers exist, a speck of dust seems somewhat insignificant.
We're all still going to do it so here are the best photo editing software, and the best photo-editing laptops for photographers.
