AI-generated contents on social media will be tagged from May– Meta

Blessing Akorowosi

Social media giant, Meta has alerted its users that contents generated through Artificial Intelligence will be marked, starting from next month.

Meta noted that the decision to label AI-generated contents was made to expose and reassure users and governments on the risks of deepfakes.

The Facebook and Instagram company noted that manipulated images and audio that don’t otherwise break its rules will no longer be removed, rather, such will be labeled and contextualised, so as not to deny users their freedom of speech.

This step was in reaction to criticism from the tech giant’s oversight board, which independently reviews Meta’s content moderation decisions.

The board in February requested that Meta urgently overhaul its approach to manipulated media given the huge advances in AI and the ease of manipulating media into highly convincing deepfakes.

The board’s warning came amid fears of rampant misuse of artificial intelligence-powered applications for disinformation on platforms in a pivotal election year not only in the United States but worldwide.

Meta’s new “Made with AI” labels will identify content created or altered with AI, including video, audio, and images. Additionally, a more prominent label will be used for content deemed at high risk of misleading the public.

“We agree that providing transparency and additional context is now the better way to address this content.

“The labels will cover a broader range of content in addition to the manipulated content that the Oversight Board recommended labeling,” Monika Bickert, Meta’s Vice President of Content Policy, said in a blog post.

These new labeling techniques are linked to an agreement made in February among major tech giants and AI players to crack down on manipulated content intended to deceive voters.

Meta, Google and OpenAI had already agreed to use a common watermarking standard that would tag images generated by their AI applications.