Photographers miffed as Meta slaps ‘Made with AI’ label on edited photos while ignoring AI-generated images

Photographers are upset that Meta is labelling their edited photos on Instagram, Facebook and Threads as “made with AI”, raising concerns that the company’s “one-size-fits-all” approach to labelling artificial intelligence (AI) content is too blunt.

The tech giant’s rollout of automated AI content tagging has prompted a backlash from the photography community and kicked off a debate about what qualifies as being made with AI.

In April, Meta announced it would start labelling images, audio and videos that it detected were AI-generated based on “industry-shared signals of AI images”. This decision follows rapid advances in generative AI that have made it possible for anyone with a smartphone to immediately make photorealistic images for free, through Meta’s own Meta AI platform.