Photographers are angry about Meta's new 'made with AI' label
Meta is labelling photographs edited to remove specks of dust as 'made with AI' while letting through completely AI-generated, obviously fake images. Photographers are upset that Meta is labelling their edited photos on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads as “made with AI”, raising concerns that the company’s “one-size-fits-all” approach to labelling artificial intelligence (AI) content is too blunt.
Backlash from the Photography Community
The tech giant’s rollout of automated AI content tagging has prompted a backlash from the photography community and kicked off a debate about what qualifies as being made with AI. In April, Meta announced it would start labelling images, audio, and videos that it detected were AI-generated based on “industry-shared signals of AI images”.
One viral post on Threads was from photographer Matt Seuss who shared a photo that he took of Utah’s spectacular Mesa Arch which had been labelled on Instagram and Threads as made with AI. Acknowledging that he used Adobe Photoshop’s generative AI feature to “remove a small distracting dust flare”, Seuss took umbrage at the label: “Photo was made with camera and slightly edited with AI — big difference from made with AI,” he replied to one user.
Controversy and Debate
Meta’s platforms and other online communities like r/Instagram are littered with photographers and other artists who dispute that the label should be added to their work. In some but not all cases, they’ve used Photoshop’s AI tools.
While the “Made with AI” tag doesn’t mean that a post is removed or penalised in Meta’s algorithms, some have argued that it undermines their work because it suggests the entire image is AI-generated or fake.
Technical Challenges and Workarounds
Meta’s AI detection is exceedingly easy to sidestep. Other Photoshop features which can significantly edit an image do not trigger the tag, including the “content aware fill” which fills in a selected section of an image using an algorithm to match the rest of the image.
One of the reasons that applying the “Made with AI” tag to these types of images has chafed photographers is because the scheme has significant holes that still allow people to post significantly edited or even AI-generated images without being branded with what one user deemed the “scarlet letter”.
Call for Transparency and Context
RMIT senior lecturer in visual communication and digital media Dr T.J. Thomson is grateful that Meta has taken some steps to improve transparency and context around images, but is worried that Meta’s “one-size-fits-all” approach may do more harm than good. He would like to see more specific labels that might show which parts of an image have been edited or how it was edited.
The confusion and angst over how this label is being rolled out has its roots in thorny questions about the definitions of photographs, AI, and reality. Machines won’t be able to guess intent so whether an edit is innocuous or meant to mislead or deceive will still require critical thinking skills and media literacy knowledge.
