Twitter opposes viralization of fake photos created with the help of AI

Recently, the viralization of false images, mostly created with the help of AI, has become commonplace on social networks. The arrest of Donald Trump, the appearance of Japan’s voluptuous (and non-existent) health minister, or Pope Francis’ peculiar Balenciaga-style coat are some of the cases that have garnered the most attention. Thus, Twitter has announced measures to make it easier to identify inaccurate photos and help avoid hoaxes..

Platform introduced a new feature to their community notes which in the future will allow flag AI-generated viral images. This new tool is in testing but is expected to be available to more users soon.

Similar to community notes, where users can add links and context to a tweet whose content is deemed false, misleading, or biased, Twitter will offer a similar experience in its new image tool. Although the scope of its application will be even wider. It is that you can verify the veracity of a tweet with a fake AI-generated photo or the image itself..

What does the latter mean? If you choose to tag an image as created by AI, the warning will appear in all tweets that use it, not just the original one. No matter how many times it has been re-released. This is really important as it is quite common for viral content to be spread from scratch between multiple accounts other than the one that originally posted it.

Twitter wants to make it easier to identify fake photos created with AI

Twitter’s decision to crack down on the spread of fake AI-generated photos came just days after the image of the alleged Pentagon explosion was circulated. A story that not only caused a public panic, but was also retweeted by multiple verified accounts, including one claiming to be an affiliate bloomberg— but also briefly in the US stock market.

For now, the Fake Photo Detection feature will be available to Community Notes members with a score of 10 or higher. In addition, initially the function will be limited in scope, since this will only work with tweets that have a single image.

From Twitter, they are already working on expanding it to posts with multiple photos and videos. They also clarified that, in principle, warnings would not appear on all images corresponding to those that were found to be false. However, we will try to tune the algorithms so that they are as accurate as possible.

Tough fight against disinformation

The spread of fake news on Twitter is a long history, but the problem seems to have gotten worse since Elon Musk bought the social network. Actually, Thierry BretonEuropean Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services, pointed out in recent days against the US company.

“Twitter is waiving the European Union’s voluntary Code of Practice on Combating Disinformation, but commitments remain. You can run, but you cannot hide. In addition to voluntary commitments, the fight against disinformation will become a legal obligation under the Digital Services Act starting August 25. . Our teams will be ready for your application”, tweeted official.

In any case, it is also important to note that the problem of virusization of false images goes beyond twitter. Let’s not forget that Midjourney, one of the most popular generative AI platforms, was forced to cancel its free trials due to disagreements with Trump and Pope Francis.