Was that photo manipulated with Google AI? You’ll soon be able to tell

With AI photo editing technologies becoming more prevalent in photos, the line between reality and fantasy is starting to blur even more. Powerful tools, such as Google’s Magic Eraser, make it easier than ever to modify photos and remove elements from them. Having some type of way to identify if a photo has been altered by AI is becoming more important than ever.

Recently, Google announced it will add a note on photos that people have edited with its AI tools. “As we bring these tools to more people, we recognize the importance of doing so responsibly with our AI Principles as guidance,” Google said in a press release. “To further improve transparency, we’re making it easier to see when AI edits have been used in Google Photos.”

With this announcement, Google Photos will note when a photo has been edited with Google AI right in the Photos app. The feature will begin rolling out before the end of the month.

Where to find Google’s new AI label on photos

Google isn’t watermarking photos, instead offering more information in the photo’s details

Google / Pocket-lint

Photos that have been edited with AI tools already contain metadata information that lets you know if someone has altered the photo using Google’s suite of AI tools. This new feature makes it more visible and easier for a user to find.

So now, when a photo is edited with AI, a note saying “Edited with Google AI” will appear under the photo’s camera info, file name, and backup status. Google’s move here will not watermark AI-edited photos. Finding the label is a bit tedious, and it’s still not the most obvious thing in the world if a photo has been edited with AI. For example, if you share a photo that’s been edited with an AI tool to a friend, it’s not immediately noticeable it’s been edited with AI unless they download the photo and look at the details on it.

Apple is making a move similar to Google’s with Apple Intelligence. When a photo is edited with Clean Up, Apple’s new AI photo editing tool, the photo is labeled in the photos app with “Modified with Clean Up” and its metadata will also be embedded to flag the photo has been edited using AI. Apple is taking a more cautious approach than others with its implementation of AI image editing tools.

In its press release, Google says that its “work is not done, and we’ll continue gathering feedback and evaluating additional solutions to add more transparency around AI edits.” So it seems the company isn’t done adding more AI safeguard features.

I appreciate what Google is doing here with this feature, and the more transparency there is around AI image editing, the better.

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