TikTok Introduces Content Credentials to Combat AI-Generated Misinformation

TikTok, the popular social media app, has announced that it will begin implementing a technology known as Content Credentials, designed to assist the platform in labelling images and videos produced through artificial intelligence (AI). This development comes after a number of tech giants, including YouTube, owned by Alphabet’s Google, and Meta Platforms, which operates Instagram and Facebook, declared their intention to adopt the same technology. Adobe initially developed Content Credentials, which is now available to other firms to use, and it has already been employed by companies such as OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. Researchers have raised concerns about the potential usage of AI-generated material as misinformation in an attempt to disrupt forthcoming US elections. TikTok was previously a signatory to an agreement between twenty tech businesses pledging to combat this issue. If a person creates an image using OpenAI’s Dall-E tool, for instance, OpenAI affixes a watermark to the resulting image. When this marked image is subsequently uploaded to TikTok, it will be automatically labelled as AI-generated. TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, has 170 million users in the United States, where a statute demanding ByteDance to sell TikTok or risk being banned was recently enacted. TikTok and ByteDance have challenged the legislation, claiming that it infringes on the First Amendment. TikTok currently labels AI-generated material produced within the app, however this new measure will extend to content created outside of the platform. “We have rules that prohibit realistic AI that isn’t labelled, so if realistic AI (generated content) appears on the platform, we will remove it as a violation of our community standards,” said Adam Presser, Head of Operations and Trust & Safety at TikTok, during an interview. (Editing by Diane Craft).