Google Search to start labelling AI-generated images

FILE PHOTO: Google has announced that it will be rolling out a new feature in search that marks AI-generated images.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Google has announced that it will be rolling out a new feature in search that helps users distinguish between AI-generated images and images taken by humans. The move comes after the tech giant has joined the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), a group of major brands that have developed the latest Content Credentials standard to prevent misinformation being spread online. 

Google said that the metadata for images will now include information like the origin of the image and where and how it was created. 

These labels can now be seen across Google apps like Search, Images and Lens. Once users click on the ‘About this image’ feature, they can see if an image was created or edited by AI. 

Besides this, the company is also working on bringing in AI content labelling into its ad platforms so that they comply with the C2PA policies when featuring AI-generated content. 

YouTube is also reportedly looking at ways to identify and label videos created or edited by AI and is expected to announce news around this later during the year. 

There are however AI platforms that have declined to follow the C2PA standard like Black Forest Labs, the AI image and video generating startup behind Flux, the model that X’s Grok uses. 

Google is also working on a watermarking tool called SynthID which was created by Google DeepMind to help identify AI-generated text, images, audio and videos online.