Meta plans to identify more AI-generated images ahead of upcoming elections
Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives at federal court in San Jose, California, on Dec. 20, 2022.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta is expanding its effort to identify images doctored by artificial intelligence as it seeks to weed out misinformation and deepfakes ahead of upcoming elections around the world.
The company is building tools to identify AI-generated content at scale when it appears on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, it announced Tuesday.
Until now, Meta only labeled AI-generated images developed using its own AI tools. Now, the company says it will seek to apply those labels on content from Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Adobe, Midjourney and Shutterstock.
The labels will appear in all the languages available on each app. But the shift won’t be immediate.
In the blog post, Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, wrote that the company will begin to label AI-generated images originating from external sources “in the coming months” and continue working on the problem “through the next year.”
The added time is needed to work with other AI companies to “align on common technical standards that signal when a piece of content has been created using AI,” Clegg wrote.
Election-related misinformation caused a crisis for Facebook after the 2016 presidential election because of the way foreign actors, largely from Russia, were able to create and spread highly charged and inaccurate content. The platform was repeatedly exploited in the ensuing years, most notably during the Covid pandemic, when people used the platform to spread vast amounts of misinformation. Holocaust deniers and QAnon conspiracy theorists also ran rampant on the site.
Meta is trying to show that it’s prepared for bad actors to use more advanced forms of technology in the 2024 cycle.
While some AI-generated content is easily detected, that’s not always the case. Services that claim to identify AI-generated text, such as essays, have been shown to exhibit bias against non-native English speakers. It’s not much easier for images and videos, though there are often signs.
Meta is looking to minimize uncertainty by working mainly with other AI companies that use invisible watermarks and certain types of metadata in the images created on their platforms. However, there are ways to remove watermarks, a problem that Meta plans to address.
“We’re working hard to develop classifiers that can help us to automatically detect AI-generated content, even if the content lacks invisible markers,” Clegg wrote. “At the same time, we’re looking for ways to make it more difficult to remove or alter invisible watermarks.”
Audio and video can be even harder to monitor than images, because there’s not yet an industry standard for AI companies to add any invisible identifiers.
“We can’t yet detect those signals and label this content from other companies,” Clegg wrote.
Meta will add a way for users to voluntarily disclose when they upload AI-generated video or audio. If they share a deepfake or other form of AI-generated content without disclosing it, the company “may apply penalties,” the post says.
“If we determine that digitally created or altered image, video or audio content creates a particularly high risk of materially deceiving the public on a matter of importance, we may add a more prominent label if appropriate,” Clegg wrote.
The photo illustration shows the Bitcoin cryptocurrency on November 12, 2024 in Shanghai, China.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
The price of bitcoin leapt back above $100,000 to start the first full trading week of the new year.
The flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by about 4% at $102,234, according to Coin Metrics. The broader crypto market, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 index, gained more than 3%. Bitcoin and ether are coming off their best weeks since Dec. 6, while Solana had its best week since Nov. 22.
“Overall, we are in a bullish environment and traders appear to be risk-on as we head into the new year,” Mario Jurina, CEO at crypto swaps platform Jumper.Exchange. “With Trump’s election set to be certified today, and January often being a bullish month — six of the past 10 years saw positive price action — it’s no wonder markets are moving upward.”
Bitcoin rises above $100,000 to start the week
The moves in crypto coincided with a rebound in tech stocks as Nvidia and shares of other chip names jumped. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was last higher by about 1.7%.
Crypto stocks Coinbase and MicroStrategy advanced nearly 6% and 5%, respectively. MicroStrategy Monday morning reported it has purchased another 1,070 bitcoins for about $101 million, bringing its total bitcoin holdings to 447,470.
Activity is coming back into the crypto market after a post-election rally that was driven by promises of a more supportive regulatory environment. The optimism sent prices rocketing for weeks before cooling at the end of the year. The price of bitcoin is expected to roughly double under the new administration this year, with some price predictions, like Fundstrat’s Tom Lee’s, being as high as $250,000.
Jakub Porzyck | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Global semiconductor stocks climbed on Monday after contract electronics giant Foxconn announced record fourth-quarter revenues, suggesting the artificial intelligence boom has far more room to run.
Hon Hai Precision Industry, which does business as Foxconn internationally, said in a Sunday statement that the company’s fourth-quarter revenue totaled 2.1 trillion New Taiwan dollars ($63.9 billion), growing 15% year-over-year.
Foxconn — which is a supplier to Apple — also set a record, posting the highest fourth-quarter revenue ever in company history, according to the statement.
The firm’s bumper revenue performance was driven by growth in its cloud and networking products — which includes AI servers like those designed by the likes of chipmaker Nvidia — and components and other products segments.
Computing products and smart consumer electronics — which numbers iPhone and other smartphones — saw “slight declines,” Foxconn said.
Shares of several semiconductor firms across Asia, Europe and the U.S. rose, as a result.
In Asia, TSMC hit a record high Monday and closed 1.9% higher in Taiwan.
The largest semiconductor manufacturer globally, TSMC produces chips for the likes of AMD and Nvidia.
Other Asian chip firms also logged share price gains — South Korea’s SK Hynix and Samsung rose nearly 10% and 4%, respectively.
In Europe, globally critical semiconductor equipment firm ASML saw its shares jump almost 6%, while fellow Dutch chip company ASMI’s stock rose almost 5%. Germany’s Infineon surged more than 6%.
Paris-listed shares of European contract chipmaker STMicroelectronics rose nearly 6%.
Stateside, Nvidia got a boost from the Foxconn numbers, climbing 2% in U.S. premarket trading.
Also boosting chip stocks on Monday was Microsoft’s announcement at the end of last week about plans to invest $80 billion in 2025 on data centers that can handle AI workloads.
Microsoft is one of several tech giants splurging on GPUs (graphics processing units) from Nvidia to train and run the most advanced AI models.
AMD, Nvidia’s closest rival, rose 3% in pre-market trading Monday, while fellow U.S. chip firms Qualcomm and Broadcom both climbed almost 2%.
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