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Google Photos could soon tell you if an image is AI-generated (Updated: Here's how it'll look)
- Google Photos could soon display IPTC credit metadata on images, which will be helpful in figuring out if an image is AI-generated or not.
- The changes are not currently live within Google Photos and could roll out in the future.
Update: October 24, 2024 (5:38 AM ET): Here’s a screenshot showing how Google Photos will show that an image is AI-generated. The screenshot below shows an “AI Info” section that mentions an image credit and a Digital source type for the photo.
Original article: October 9, 2024 (11:44 AM ET): AI image generators are one of the most popular uses of AI these days. Whether editing an existing image with AI or creating a realistic one from scratch, it’s clear that we’re seeing many photos these days with some element of AI in them. With this rising use case, spotting a real image from an AI-generated or AI-manipulated image becomes increasingly difficult. Google Photos could soon help you out in this as Google prepares to display information that would help identify AI images.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
In Google Photos v7.3, we’ve spotted clues that indicate the app could soon help identify whether an image is AI-generated. One of the new layout files inside this version contains the following XML code:
<TextView android:id="@id/ai_info" />
<TextView android:id="@id/credit" />
<TextView android:id="@id/digital_source_type" />The “@id/credit” ID resource could likely show the image’s credit tag. For example, images generated through Google Gemini usually come with a “Made with Google AI” credit tag, which can be viewed in the AI-generated image’s EXIF data. Even Google Photos has a few of its own tags, like “AI-Generated with Google Photos” and “AI-Generated with Google” which it adds when you use Magic Editor.
The “@id/digital_source_type” ID resource could refer to the Digital Source Type field, which indicates the media source from which the digital image was created. We also spotted a reference to the “compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia” value, which Google Photos uses when an image has been corrected or enhanced using a Generative AI model.
We’re not entirely sure what the “@id/ai_info” ID resource could refer to. Speculatively, it could perhaps identify the AI or model that generated the image.
All of the above information will likely be shown in the image details section. Thus, displaying the IPTC metadata will make it easy to identify whether an image is AI-generated.
This change isn’t live yet on Google Photos. But given the rapid proliferation of AI-generated images in our lives, we reckon the feature will come around sooner rather than later.