Instagram launched a new account label for creators who regularly use artificial intelligence tools to build their posts, in order to increase transparency and facilitate the expanded use of AI in content.
Creators can now toggle on the “AI creator” tag within their IG profile, to add the new label to both their profile display and any content they post.
The label will include additional info on the profile that says the account regularly uses AI creation tools, which could help to reduce confusion and misinformation around AI-generated material in the app.
As explained by Instagram: “This new label builds on our existing ‘AI info’ labels that you can apply when posting AI content and that we automatically add whenever we detect that AI tools were used in the creation process. … In instances when content is labelled as ‘AI info’ and posted by a labelled AI creator, the ‘AI info’ label would appear on the content instead of the ‘AI creator’ label.”
The update aims to provide more clarity around what’s real and what’s not in the app. And given the rising use of AI tools to generate content, it could play an important role in clarifying unreal images and ensuring that viewers are not misled.
Instagram has been working to prepare for a broader influx of AI-generated content for some time, with Instagram chief Adam Mosseri warning in January that AI tools would soon be able to replicate any creator’s work, and would be indistinguishable from human-created content.
In some ways, that runs counter to Instagram’s push to encourage original content creators to keep posting to the app. As such, adding more labels for AI-generated content could be another way to manage this aspect, and ensure that human-created and machine-created material is more clearly labelled in-stream.
Though Instagram could also look to discourage the use of AI in content creation in the app, in order to ensure that AI fakes don’t gain traction.
But that would be in opposition to Meta’s broader shift towards generative AI, with the company investing hundreds of billions of dollars in AI projects, making AI a key focus of its business.
As such, Meta actually wants more people to use AI in their posts. Even if that means eroding trust in the content displayed. Even if that means that some creators are going to have their original ideas and concepts replicated by AI tools.
From a wider view, it seems like Meta would glean more value from limiting the reach of AI content, as opposed to just being transparent about it, but maybe Meta is also right in that the AI content wave is coming anyway, and it’s better off working with it, rather than trying to force it out.
But it does seem like Meta is, in part, solving for a problem that it also helped create. Meta continues to prompt users to generate AI depictions of themselves in-stream, as it works to build buzz around its AI tools. And now, it’s also adding more labels to enhance trust in the content that it’s encouraging users to generate.
It seems somewhat counterintuitive, but it also makes sense for Meta to encourage the use of AI labels on content where it can.
Instagram said that not all users will be able to switch on the AI creator label as yet, though the functionality will be expanded “in the coming weeks.”
