TikTok will begin labeling AI-generated content when uploaded from outside its platform.
TikTok says its efforts are an attempt to combat the spread of misinformation on its social media platform.
“AI opens up amazing creative opportunities, but it can confuse or mislead viewers if they don’t know the content was created by AI,” the company said in a prepared statement Thursday. “The taxonomy helps make that context clear — which is why we called AIGC Made with TikTok AI Effects, and we've been asking creators to label real-life AIGC for over a year.”
The move is part of an overall effort by those in the technology industry to provide more safeguards for the use of artificial intelligence. In February dead It announced that it is working with industry partners on technical standards that will eventually facilitate image and video recognition And the sound generated by artificial intelligence tools. The effort will include Facebook and Instagram users seeing labels on AI-generated photos that appear in their social media feeds.
Google said last year that AI labels would be coming to YouTube and its other platforms.
The push for digital watermarking and tagging of AI-generated content was part of an executive order issued by US President Joe Biden signed in October.
TikTok said it is cooperating with the Alliance for Content Source and Authenticity and will use its own content credential technology.
The technology can attach metadata to content, which can be used to instantly recognize and categorize AI-generated content, the company said. TikTok said it began using this capability on Thursday on photos and videos and will come to audio-only content soon.
Over the coming months, content credentials will be attached to content created on TikTok, which will remain on the content when downloaded. This will help identify AI-generated content created on TikTok and help people know when, where and how the content was created or edited. Other platforms that support content credentials will be able to classify it automatically.
TikTok said it is the first video-sharing platform to put credentials into practice and will join an Adobe-led content authentication initiative to help drive credential adoption within the industry.
“TikTok is the first social media platform to support content credentials, and with more than 140 million users in the U.S. alone, their platform and vast community of creators and users are an essential part of the chain of trust needed to increase transparency online,” said Dana Rao, Executive Vice President, Adobe. and general counsel and chief trust officer, in a blog post.
TikTok's policy in the past has been to encourage users to rate content that was created or heavily edited by artificial intelligence. It also requires users to classify all AI-generated content as containing realistic images, audio and video.
“Our users and creators are very excited about AI and what it can do for their creativity and ability to connect with audiences.” Adam Presser, head of operations, trust and safety at TikTok, told ABC News. “At the same time, we want to make sure that people have the ability to understand what is fact and what is fiction.”
The announcement originally came on ABC's “Good Morning America” on Thursday.
TikTok's AI actions come just two days after TikTok announced that it and its Chinese parent company ByteDance had… He filed a lawsuit He challenged a new US law that would ban the video-sharing app in the US unless it is sold to an approved buyer, saying it unfairly targets the platform and represents an unprecedented attack on free speech.
The lawsuit is the latest turning point in what is shaping up to be A long legal battle about the future of TikTok in the US – which could end up before the Supreme Court. If TikTok loses, it says it will have to shut down next year.