Meta to label AI generated images on Facebook, Instagram and Threads

Meta will label AI-generated images across its family of apps – Facebook, Instagram, and Threads – in response to user demand for transparency surrounding the technology.

The tech giant said it has been working with industry partners to come to an agreement on common technical standards and guardrails that identify when a piece of content has been created using AI, working together through forums like PAI (Partnership on AI).

Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said: “We do that by applying ‘Imagined with AI’ labels to photorealistic images created using our Meta AI feature, but we want to be able to do this with content created with other companies’ tools too.”

In the statement, Clegg explained that the capability is in the works and will be out in the market in the coming months and will be available in “all languages supported by each app.”

“We’re taking this approach through the next year, during which a number of important elections are taking place around the world.

“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,” he said.

“What we learn will inform industry best practices and our own approach going forward,” Clegg added.

The platform has already implemented visible markers, invisible watermarking, and metadata on its Meta AI feature to ensure other platforms can identify them.

Meta said that they are building tools that can identify “invisible markers” at scale in order to label images from Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Adobe, Midjourney and Shutterstock as they implement plans for adding metadata to images created by their tools.

Clegg said: “We’ll continue to learn from how people use our tools in order to improve them. And we’ll continue to work collaboratively with others through forums like PAI to develop common standards and guardrails.”