If this labeling mishap sounds familiar then you may recall that a similar issue blighted photography on Instagram with a “Made by AI” label in 2024, a few months after the feature was released. That February, Meta announced it would scan images for IPTC and C2PA metadata, which can prove with reasonable certainty whether generative AI was used to create or manipulate them. But it’s always been vague about its methods. In 2024, the detection system reportedly swept up pictures whose Adobe metadata indicated they had been retouched with generative AI tools, even if the changes were extremely minor and substantively resulted in the same photograph. Meta then promised to tweak its labeling approach to better reflect “the amount of AI used in an image.” It also said it uses “industry standard indicators that other companies include in content from their tools,” but there isn’t any recent information available about what they are, or how and when it scans for them. Meta didn’t respond to a request for clarification.
