Meta adjustments its label from ‘Made with AI’ to ‘AI data’ to point use of AI in photographs

After Meta started tagging photos with a “Made with AI” label in May, photographers complained that the social networking company had been applying labels to real photos where they had used some basic editing tools.

Because of the user feedback and general confusion around what level of AI is used in a photo, the company is changing the tag to “AI info” across all of Meta’s apps.

Meta said that the earlier version of the tag wasn’t clear enough for users to indicate that the image with the tag is not necessarily created with AI, but might have used AI-powered tools in the editing process.

“Like others across the industry, we’ve found that our labels based on these indicators weren’t always aligned with people’s expectations and didn’t always provide enough context. For example, some content that included minor modifications using AI, such as retouching tools, included industry standard indicators that were then labeled ‘Made with AI’,” the company said in an updated blog post.

The company is not changing the underlying technology for detecting use of AI in photos and labeling them. Meta still uses information from technical metadata standards such as C2PA and IPTC that include information about use of AI tools.

That means, if photographers use tools like Adobe’s Generative AI Fill to remove objects, their photos might still be tagged with the new label. However, Meta hopes that the new label will help people understand that the image with the tag is not always created entirely by AI.

“‘AI Info’ can encompass content that was made and/or modified with AI so the hope is that this is more in line with people’s expectations, while we work with companies across the industry to improve the process,” Meta spokesperson Kate McLaughlin told TechCrunch over email.

The new tag will still not solve the problem of completely AI-generated photos going undetected. And it won’t tell users about how much AI-powered editing has been done on an image.

Meta and other social network will need to work to set guidelines without being unfair to photographers who have not made alterations to their editing workflows, but the tools they used to touch up photos have some generative AI element. On the other hand, companies like Adobe should warn photographers that when they use a certain tool, their image might be tagged with a label on other services.