The parent company of Instagram and Facebook, Meta, has announced it will be labelling images on its platforms that have been enhanced by AI, in a move to call out “people and organisations that actively want to deceive people”.

In a statement, Meta President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg announced the tech giant is working with industry partners on common technical standards for identifying AI content, including video and audio.

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Currently, photorealistic images created using Meta’s AI imaging tool are already labelled as “Imagined with AI”, however, the company announced it would work to begin labelling AI-enhanced images developed on rival platforms, such as Google, Open AI, Microsoft and Shutterstock.

Clegg said: “As the difference between human and synthetic content gets blurred, people want to know where the boundary lies.

“People are often coming across AI-generated content for the first time and our users have told us they appreciate transparency around this new technology. So it’s important that we help people know when photorealistic content they’re seeing has been created using AI.”

He added that the feature is already being built, with labels being rolled out in all languages in the coming months.

Clegg continued: “We’re taking this approach through the next year, during which a number of important elections are taking place around the world.

However, he noted the move was limited to images, with AI tools generating audio and videos not currently including these labels.

He said: “We determine that digitally created or altered image, video or audio content creates a particularly high risk of materially deceiving the public on a matter of importance, we may add a more prominent label if appropriate, so people have more information and context.

“This work is especially important as this is likely to become an increasingly adversarial space in the years ahead.”

“People and organisations that actively want to deceive people with AI-generated content will look for ways around safeguards that are put in place to detect it. Across our industry and society more generally, we’ll need to keep looking for ways to stay one step ahead,” Clegg concluded.