Is that photo real or AI? Google's 'About this image' aims to help you tell the difference

Google wants to help you determine if the photo you’re seeing online is real.

As AI photo-generating programs and AI-powered photo-editing programs become more commonplace, it’s sometimes difficult to tell what’s authentic and what’s not. In the coming months, Google says, a new technology will help with that.

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Called “About this image,” the feature is a part of Content Credentials, a technical standard for tracking the origin and history of an online asset. By using metadata in a photo, “About this image” can tell whether it’s original, edited by software, or produced by AI. Google developed the tool in conjunction with the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), an organization dedicated to addressing AI-generated content issues.

The feature will be accessible in Google Images, Google Lens, and Circle to Search.

When an image with C2PA metadata appears in Search, you can click “About this image” to learn about its origins. Google says its advertising system is starting to integrate C2PA, to ramp it up over time and use it to enforce ad policies. The tech giant is also exploring ways to use C2PA on YouTube to relay information to viewers about how the creator produced the content — for instance, the specific camera model they used.

Amazon joined the C2PA committee last week, agreeing to link Content Credentials to content generated by its Titan Image Generator and adding the tool to AWS Elemental MediaConvert.

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Since Adobe was a founding member of C2PA, editing programs Photoshop and Lightroom add the specific metadata, but many programs don’t, so the number of photos in the “About this image” programs might be small at first. Also, it seems as though you could foil Google’s system by simply removing metadata from a photo, but this is a good starting point in the fight against misinformation.