EU Mandates Labels on Authentic-Looking AI Content Starting August 2
EU will mandate labels on authentic-looking AI content starting August 2
Starting August 2, the EU will require digital watermarks on AI-generated images, audio, and text designed to look real. This rule, part of the AI Act, excludes personal chats and artistic works but targets advertising and publishing. Companies face fines up to three percent of global revenue for non-compliance. While platforms like TikTok and Meta already have policies, this mandate ensures consistent labeling to protect democracy and consumer trust.
It is a matter not only of customer protection, it's also a matter of democracy protection.
- rsynnott
Meta-commentary on this discussion: okay, I know the ‘hacker news’ thing has always been kinda a misnomer, and has gotten moreso. But it’s still kind of shocking to me how little people here value making something, versus pretending to make something. There’s value to actually doing stuff.
The amount of “all artists will use AI to pretend to make stuff, because money” is honestly kinda bizarre, and completely misunderstands the motivations of most artists, writers and makers.
- LelouBil
Here's the actual law :
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1689/oj/eng
I feel like this should be linked in any discussion of any legal matter
- figassis
How do you define "trying to make it look authentic"? You make a deepfake of a politician saying a discriminatory joke, and the author will just say "It was obvious this was not intended to be authentic. Anyone could see it's out of character". But the message already influenced millions.
- Dfol
It won't work.
Most of the media you see in the near future (if not already) is going to be at least AI assisted. They're going to be overloaded by reports of AI generation not labeled as AI.
I'm also curious, what about AI assisted media? If a company writes a full article, then uses AI to edit it a bit, does that need to be labeled?
- zkmon
Makes sense. Same as "Made in XXX" label. Users have the right to know where the product was made and how synthetic the product is.
- Sol-
EU once again at the frontier of AI.. regulation.
Hard to assess what this rule will actually accomplish. Ultimately AI will be involved in all creative processes going forward, so all pieces of media will have at least some basic AI disclaimer. At the same time, the bad actors that the EU is so paranoid about (Russians secretly undermining our democracy and other boogeymen) will obviously not use the label.
But it's another tool in the EU's toolkit to arbitrarily enforce fines on big tech when politically convenient, of course. That's one thing we remain good at.
- xyzsparetimexyz
Surely a better idea would be to focus on how we can idk, get camera firmware to cryptographically sign photos or somethin, and then have editing software apply a signature on top. Or at least encourage a system where theres a good chain of image provenance for photojournalists
- amazingamazing
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