With several major elections looming around the world, social media sites are looking to crack down on the spread of AI-generated images.
But as Instagram starts to tag posts as ‘Made with AI‘, some real photos appear to be getting caught in the crossfire.
From professional photographers to celebs like Logan Paul, Instagram users have been frustrated to find their posts have been slapped with an AI label.
According to head of Instagram Adam Mosseri, this is because Instagram is picking up on the use of tools like Photoshop which frequently uses AI processes.
Speaking to Instagrammers @colinandsamir, Mr Mosseri said: ‘We have to figure this out because clearly this is frustrating and not the ideal experience.’
Celebs like Logan Paul have found their posts flagged as ‘Made with AI’ as Instagram cracks down on artificially generated content. It’s unclear to what extent this image was altered with AI
Meta introduced AI labelling in February of this year for Instagram, Facebook, and Threads.
While users have the option to manually add a tag for audio and video content, Instagram automatically detects when AI images are being posted.
As Mr Mosseri explained, Instagram does this by reading the images’ ‘metadata’ – a bundle of information automatically attached to images when they are created.
When you make an image in AI software like Midjourney, the programme automatically attaches a piece of information to the metadata which labels it as AI-generated.
Since Instagram can read that label when you post an image, anything that has been created with AI tools are being tagged with the ‘Made with AI’ label.
Any post on Instagram which has metadata showing the use of AI editing tools will be flagged as made with AI, whether it is fully AI-generated or not
The issue arises when Instagram users try to upload images that they have edited in software like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom.
Photoshop is now loaded with tools like ‘content aware fill’ or ‘generative fill’ which allow users to easily remove or change parts of their image.
When these are used, the software automatically adds information to the metadata, letting other programs know that some of the image has been made with AI.
Mr Mosseri explained: ‘It’s just the metadata on the image. People are doing benign things in Photoshop that are technically using AI.
‘And then we’re just respecting the file’s mark saying “Hey, AI was used to make this”.’
Photographers have complained that the changes mean their real photographs end up getting flagged as AI
Even making very small changes using certain tools in Photoshop seems to be enough for Instagram to tag the post
As photo editing tools add more AI features, more of photographers work is likely to end up getting flagged
However, photographers are frustrated that the changes are labelling their work as AI-generated despite being real photos.
On Threads, photographer Peter Yan shared a before-and-after comparison of his editing process on an image that had been flagged as ‘Made with AI’.
Mr Yan added: ‘I did not use generative AI, only Photoshop to clean up some spots.
‘This “Made with AI” was auto labelled by Instagram when I posted it, I did not select this option.’
Likewise, photographer Matt Growcoot complained that Instagram had ‘given this photo a label of ‘Made With AI’ despite it being an actual photograph that he took.
‘The reason for the AI tag is because I removed a speck of dust with an AI-powered tool in Photoshop,’ he said.
Adding automatic AI tags does also not mean that anything you see without a tag is guaranteed to be 100 per cent authentic.
However it will be fairly easy to bypass the tagging system by removing the images metadata, so users are warned to stay vigilant for AI generated content
Since Instagram’s methods rely on reading the image metadata, it would be fairly easy to avoid tagging simply by removing the metadata.
There are a several ways to do this but one of the simplest is to screenshot the AI-generate picture and then post the screenshot instead.
On Instagram, MailOnline was able to find a large number of posts described as AI art by their creators that had not been tagged.
There were even several posts which included the ‘#madewithAI’ in their caption that had not been tagged by Instagram’s filters.
Mr Mosseri said: ‘There will be content on all platforms that is made with AI and is not marked with AI because the person who made it specifically tried to avoid that.
‘Yes I think we should do our part to detect what we can, to label what we can but people just have to be discerning readers.’
Meta has been contacted for comment.
