Microsoft, Adobe, and other big names this week pledged to add metadata to their AI-generated images so that future compatible apps will flag them up as machine-made using a special symbol.
For instance, Microsoft said artwork produced by its text-to-picture Bing Image Creator and Bing AI chatbot will feature that metadata at some point. You can see what we mean from the aforementioned Content Credentials website. Open it up and scroll down to the AI-made butterfly example. The webpage mocks up what that image should look like in an application that can parse the picture's metadata: the symbol is displayed in the top corner and when you click or tap it, a label appears saying it's AI generated.
Think: something like Google reverse image search, and it returns the original metadata. That way if someone tries to post your pic to the web or via an app, and everything clicks into place, the origin of the picture should be clear, even if the metadata was lost prior to posting – it would be recovered from the Content Credentials cloud.