Human-made, AI-made, there is a clear difference in them.
Whereas the former involves neurons, synapses and neurotransmitters of a flesh and living individual the latter involves mimicking the former with machine-learning technology, neural networks, natural language processing and others.
What this means, literally, there is a clear line that differentiate a real photo and an AI-made photo.
Meta, the tech giant that is also the largest social media company around, started tagging AI-made photos with the "Made with AI" label, even when the photo was retouched even by the slightest using editing tools, like Adobe Photoshop.
The company's image-recognition algorithm erroneously tagged real photos with the special label.
Sooner and later, backlash happens.
As users on Facebook and Instagram have been less than pleased seeing their uploads tagged as "Made with AI," Meta is making a slight tweak to its labels, in order to clarify confusion around what, exactly, these indicators mean when displayed in-stream.
To do this, Meta revised the wording of the tags to the less definitive "AI Info" instead.
In a dedicated web page, Meta said that it's "making changes to the way we handle manipulated media based on feedback from the Oversight Board and our policy review process with public opinion surveys and expert consultations."
"Like others across the industry, we’ve found that our labels based on these indicators weren’t always aligned with people’s expectations and didn’t always provide enough context."
"For example, some content that included minor modifications using AI, such as retouching tools, included industry standard indicators that were then labeled 'Made with AI.'"
"While we work with companies across the industry to improve the process so our labeling approach better matches our intent, we’re updating the “Made with AI” label to “AI info” across our apps, which people can click for more information."
A label may seem just like a label. But in this case, the using of the label, in some circumstances and context, is like claiming something when it's not.
On social media where people can share just about anything, an image is worth a thousand words, and a video can translate to a thousand images. And putting a claim that an original work is an AI's job can be painful by the creator.
This mistake led to a lot of people complaining that their work had the tag applied incorrectly.
"While we work with companies across the industry to improve the process so our labeling approach better matches our intent, we’re updating the 'Made with AI' label to 'AI info' across our apps, which people can click for more information," Meta said.
Meta said that it's adding the revised AI Info labels to a wider range of video, audio and image content, and is automatically doing this when it detects "industry standard AI image indicators or when people disclose that they’re uploading AI-generated content."
"As we’ve said from the beginning, we’re consistently improving our AI products, and we are working closely with our industry partners on our approach to AI labeling," said Meta spokesperson Kate McLaughlin.
By renaming the label, Meta hopes that it can more accurately represent that the content may simply be modified rather than making it seem like it is entirely AI-generated.