This kind of regulation needs to be enforced with bounties and fines.
AI slop can be made realistically enough to deceive, and there should be increasing sentences if willful intent to deceive is proven in court.
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2026
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I do wonder if they plan to draw a line somewhere in "how AI" the image needs to be. Like, if it's a raw photo, that's fine. If it's enhanced by filters or something, probably not AI fair to say.
But what about the, like, magic eraser and infilling? If I use a tool to erase a bunch of people from a bridge and draw new parts of bridge that weren't in the original photo... is that AI?
If I use AI to pull a mask and cut someone out from the background, and then put them overtop of a stock background, that uses AI to do work I could have done by hand. Probably fine. But what if I use AI to paint a new background that didn't exist before this photo. Is that AI?
If I take a picture of me in a real place, doing a real thing, and then use AI infill to paint a different face onto my face so it's not me anymore, but the rest of the photo including my body is real, is it AI because that person doesn't exist?
I think the line is are you enhancing the image or enhancing the truth?
If I use AI...Is that AI?
I'd say yes, lol
But the article is about AI-generated images, so I believe anything that gets spat out from the result of a prompt (even a prompt with an image input) should be tagged. Starting with the biggest companies, of course.
I'd be okay if there were a running list of disclaimer boilerplates:
~ Generated with AI
~ Altered with AI
~ Edited with AI
~ Cleaned with AI
~ Fixed [with non-AI image editing software]
Plan? Id be surprisrd if UK lawmakers barely undetstand what a digital image even is
I would say most of those materially alter the content of the picture. Something like filters or ordinary lighting settings alter how the picture appears, but don't alter its content.
EU is bi-polar. Making some of the best regulations (GDPR, AI Act…) and then suddenly fucking people over with stuff like Chat Control.
The EU is a collection of different states with different values and priorities, any of which can propose legislation or recommendations. Many of the states and parties disagree with each other on diverse issues.
Y'know, like a democracy.
Chat control is a divisive idea and one that has never had majority support.
This isn't America where the gob-king just says "tarifs are 200% now!!" and people act like it's true.
The US is in a unique situation in which the President has tossed all illusions of regularity out the window, and checks from Congress and SCOTUS have been completely nullified. (Though Congress is shifting as Trump is making Republicans unelectable.) The federal government has been literally captured by corporate and oligarch interests.
Before Trump, the US was not a democracy -- not really -- but it pretended to be one, and did so convincingly for a large enough number of voters that little was done to assure rights were preserved. (For the record, a report from Oxford quantifies the US as behaving like an oligarchy with some democratic features.)
And after the 9/11 attacks and during the International War on Terror, a lot of rights were quietly stripped away, since everyone was afraid of foreign Islamist extremist terrorists... completely ignoring the radical far-right home-grown terrorists we have. The FBI's disinterest in white supremacists through the George W. Bush and Obama eras is conspicuous.
Most people don't realize the Bill of Rights has been gutted until they're on the business end of a police encounter. And by then it's too late.
Anyway, depending on the results and aftermath of the midterm elections this November, the US might pull back towards democracy the way it has at prior points in its history, or go full Third Reich.
It depends on how pissed we are without food and healthcare and an ongoing war that's being poorly conducted. But maybe the big propaganda machine will keep us wanting to own the libs and hate on trans folk (and concentrating and torturing immigrants) for a while longer.
Chat control never had majority support, indeed. Still, Chat Control Light is in effect right now. Not making the EU looks very democratic.
Chat control was US big techs baby. They wanted to keep scanning peoples messages but GDPR messes with that so they’ve been trying to get Brussels to give them an exception forever. The “CSAM” angle is just plausible deniability
Hmm, I also hate US Big Tech, but do you have any source for your claims?
Yes. There was a lot of questionable links and donations uncovered between the politicians and US firms. Even after the temporary law expired in April they continued to scan illegally . I also recall reading an article about how Zuckerberg met directly with members of the EU Parliament before it was passed by default but can’t find that article at the moment.
Thanks for sharing. I keep underestimating the evil intent of these companies…
I have a feeling that this will backfire. There will obviously still be a lot of unlabeled AI content made in/by foreign nations and local models, and since AI content is supposed to be labeled, people will be less cautious and more easily fooled by it.
At least you can quickly filter out posts that are tagged. It takes much more energy to refute bullshit than spreading it (Brandolini’s law).
And users or networks that are spreading untagged fake content can get fined and social media will be strongly encouraged to ban such users. That depends on the enforcement of course.
synthetic text, images, video and audio designed to look truthful must be visibly marked as AI-generated and contain a digital watermark to show the artificial origins of the content.
Great! Basically the browsers could then just highlight or filter images that are AI generated based on the digital metadata. What would be important that all image generators put those metadata tags in, and all image manipulation software leaves then in by default. And that if you paste an image in some image tool, it copies the AI label.
All this costs basically nothing and hurts nobody. It's just adding and reading some metadata. And A LOT of the anger about not being able to tell what is real and what is not disappears. The responses are seriously silly
And of course they then need to enforce this. You'll still have images pretending to be real which are fake, but at least you can easily and quickly filter out the marked ones. Basically Brandolini's law, it takes the viewer much more energy to debunk bullshit he's seeing than spreading it. So this helps at least in that. And violations can be fined, and social media will not also be encouraged to ban users posting fake images without markers.
A fundamental human right people should have is the "RIGHT TO REALITY", to know what is real and what is fake and to not be deceived. The most extreme would be to put people into "The Matrix" or a simulation without them knowing. And what we're seeing today is kinda like this - politicians lie and mainstream media obscures.
Yeah then some evidence of Andrew Mountbatten mutilating children comes out and they go “oh look, you can computer forensically tell the digital AI watermark has been removed! It must be fake!”
AI exists for one reason only: to help the ruling class get away with whatever the fuck they want.
It's nice to see what semi-competent adults running a region can accomplish...
glares at a giant whiny baby of a country rolling in its own shit
The rules will not apply to users’ personal content
So... easy workaround then? It's just my personal content bro, not at all paid for by the state/business interests
This is tautologous, if a label is needed to differentiate AI generated imagery how do you identify unlabelled generated images to enforce the rule.
The same way you detect any other fraud. It can range from analysis to whistleblowers. The point is not even to catch all fraud, it's to catch it often enough that most people and companies will not attempt it.
As often, it's more of a liability thing than anything else.
There are analysis techniques that can determine if AI generated an image. They aren’t certain, but the can provide a % degree of confidence.
The problem is that AI will get better at avoiding this (even if it’s not being designed to specifically), and AI “ enhancement” also leaves similar artifacts (things like clearing up sensor-tearing or compression artifacts; iOS does a bunch of this and I think Android too)
Detection will always be an arms race; the real problem is how to we verify those techniques? How do we determine that government witnesses are testifying to verifiable methods? If we cannot do that then everything falls apart, from responsible disclosure in news articles to trials in a court of law.
They will do what happened in California. They will label everything so it doesn't have the intended affect anymore.
It reminds me of backup beepers on construction vehicles. Ever work on a busy construction site? It is nonstop beeping from every direction. Your brain eventually blocks it out.