Google announced on Tuesday that users can now find out whether an image was generated by generative artificial intelligence (AI) in a new way. The tech giant has been developing internal tools to watermark AI-generated content, and in February it joined the Content Provenance and Authenticity Alliance (C2PA) as a steering committee member. After working with other industry players to develop new technical standards, the company is now integrating them into images accessible through its tools.
Google helps users identify AI-generated images
The risk with AI-generated imagery is that many digitally created and enhanced images are indistinguishable from real images. As a result, there has been a surge in the problem of deepfakes, where realistic AI-generated images representing people, places, or events are claimed to be authentic in order to spread misinformation.
Google said in a blog post that earlier this year it worked with other members of the alliance to develop a new version (2.1) of the technical standard called “Content Credentials,” which is said to be more secure against different types of tampering and has stricter technical requirements. Now, the standard is being added to the images that can be found using Google’s tools.
The tech giant said content credentials will be integrated into images displayed in Google Images, Lens, and Circle to Search. This means that when users go to the “About this image” section of an image, they can check the C2PA metadata to confirm whether the image was created or edited using AI tools.
In addition, Google said it intends to integrate C2PA metadata with its advertising system. This data will guide the company’s key policies and enforcement strategies in the future. In addition, it is also studying how to deliver C2PA information to viewers on YouTube to help them understand whether a video was shot with a camera or produced digitally.
Notably, the tech giant has been developing an AI-powered content watermarking technology called SynthID. Created by Google DeepMind, the system embeds information into image pixels, making it invisible to the naked eye but visible when examined with special tools.
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