Images emitted by OpenAI’s generative models will include metadata disclosing their origin, which in turn can be used by applications to alert people to the machine-made nature of that content.
Specifically, the Microsoft-championed super lab is, as expected, adopting the Content Credentials specification, which was devised by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), an industry body backed by Adobe, Arm, Microsoft, Intel, and more.
Content Credentials is pretty simple and specified in full here: it uses standard data formats to store within media files details about who made the material and how. This metadata isn’t directly visible to the user and is cryptographically protected so that any unauthorized changes are obvious.
Applications that support this metadata, when they detect it in a file’s contents, are expected to display a little “cr” logo over the content to indicate there is Content Credentials information present in that file. Clicking on that logo should open up a pop-up containing that information, including any disclosures that the stuff was made by AI.
How the C2PA ‘cr’ logo might appear on an OpenAI-generated image in a supporting app. Source: OpenAI
The idea being here that it should be immediately obvious to people viewing or editing stuff in supporting applications – from image editors to web browsers, ideally – whether or not the content on screen is AI made.
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the Content Credentials strategy isn’t foolproof as we’ve previously reported. The metadata can be easily stripped out or exported without it, or the “cr” cropped out of screenshots, so no “cr” logo will appear on the material in future in any applications. It also relies on apps and services to support the specification, whether they are creating or displaying media.
To work at scale and gain adoption, it also needs some kind of cloud system that can be used to restore removed metadata, which Adobe happens to be pushing, as well as a marketing campaign to spread brand awareness. Increase its brandwidth, if you will.
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n terms of file-size impact, OpenAI insisted that a 3.1MB PNG file generated by its DALL-E API grows by about three percent (or about 90KB) when including the metadata.
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Source: OpenAI latest to add ‘Made by AI’ metadata to model output • The Register
It’s a decent enough idea, a bit like an artist signing their works. Just hopefully it won’t look so damn ugly as in the example and each AI will have their own little logo.
Robin Edgar
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