Instagram influencers and celebrities, including Logan Paul, will have their REAL photos marked with a ‘made with AI’ label
With several major elections looming around the world, social media sites are trying to crack down on the spread of AI-generated images.
But now that Instagram is starting to tag posts as “Made with AI,” some real photos seem to be getting caught in the crossfire.
From professional photographers to celebrities like Logan Paul, Instagram users are frustrated to find their posts tagged with an AI.
According to head of Instagram Adam Mosseri, this is because Instagram is increasingly using tools such as Photoshop, which make extensive use of AI processes.
Speak with Instagrammers @colinandsamirsaid Mr Mosseri: ‘We need to get to the bottom of this because this is clearly frustrating and not the ideal experience.’
Celebrities like Logan Paul have found their posts marked as “Made with AI,” as Instagram cracks down on artificially generated content. It is unclear to what extent this picture has changed with AI
Meta introduced AI labeling for Instagram, Facebook and Threads in February this year.
While users have the option to manually add a tag for audio and video content, Instagram automatically detects when AI images are posted.
As Mr Mosseri explained, Instagram does this by reading images’ “metadata” – a bundle of information that is automatically linked to images when they are created.
When you create an image in AI software like Midjourney, the program automatically adds a piece of information to the metadata, labeling it as AI-generated.
Because Instagram can read that label when you post an image, anything created with AI tools will be tagged with the label “Made with AI.”
Any post on Instagram with metadata showing the use of AI editing tools will be marked as Made with AI, regardless of whether it is fully AI-generated or not
The problem occurs when Instagram users try to upload images that they have edited in software like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom.
Photoshop is now loaded with tools like ‘content aware fill’ or ‘generative fill’ that allow users to easily remove or change parts of their image.
When these are used, the software automatically adds information to the metadata, letting other programs know that part of the image was created with AI.
Mr Mosseri explained: ‘It’s just the metadata on the image. People do benign things in Photoshop that technically use AI.
“And then we just respect the mark of the file: “Hey, AI was used to create this.”
Photographers have complained that the changes will result in their real photos eventually being flagged as AI
Even making very minor changes using certain tools in Photoshop seems to be enough for Instagram to tag the post
As photo editing tools add more AI features, more photographers’ work will likely be highlighted
However, photographers are frustrated that the changes label their work as AI-generated, despite being real photos.
On Threads, photographer Peter Yan shared a before-and-after comparison of his editing process on an image marked “Made with AI.”
Mr Yan added: “I didn’t use any generative AI, just Photoshop to clean up some spots.
“This ‘Made with AI’ was automatically tagged by Instagram when I posted it, I didn’t select this option.”
Similarly, photographer Matt Growcoot complained that Instagram “labeled this photo ‘Made With AI’ despite it being a real photo he took.”
“The reason for the AI tag is that I removed a speck of dust using an AI-powered tool in Photoshop,” he said.
Adding automatic AI tags also doesn’t mean that everything you see without a tag is guaranteed to be 100 percent authentic.
However, it will be quite easy to bypass the tagging system by removing the metadata from the images, warning users to remain vigilant against AI-generated content
Since Instagram’s methods rely on reading the image’s metadata, it would be quite easy to prevent tags by simply removing the metadata.
There are several ways to do this, but one of the simplest is to take a screenshot of the AI-generated image and then post it instead.
On Instagram, MailOnline was able to find a large number of posts described by their creators as AI art that were not tagged.
There were even several posts with the ‘#madewithAI’ in their caption that were not tagged by Instagram’s filters.
Mr Mosseri said: ‘There will be content on all platforms that is created with AI and not marked with AI because the person who created it has specifically tried to avoid that.
‘Yes, I think we have to do our part to detect what we can, to label what we can, but people just have to be critical readers.’
Meta has been contacted for comment.