China has released a set of guidelines on labeling internet content that is generated or composed by artificial intelligence (AI) technology, which are set to take effect on Sept. 1.

  • perestroika@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    As an exception to most regulations that we hear about from China, this approach actually seems well considered - something that might benefit people and work.

    Similar regulations should be considered by other countries. Labeling generated content at the source, hopefully without the metadata being too extensive (this is where China might go off the handle) would help avoid at least two things:

    • casual deception
    • training AI with material generated by another AI, leading to degradation of ability to generate realistic content
  • Magister@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Me: “hé <AI name> remove the small text which is at the bottom right in this picture”

    AI: “Done, here is the picture cleaned of the text”

  • Lexam@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    This is a bad idea. It creates a stigma and bias against innocent Artificial beings. This is the equivalent of forcing a human to wear a collar. TM watermark

  • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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    4 days ago

    Would it be more effective to have something where cameras digitally sign the photos? Then, it also makes photos more attributable, which sounds like China’s thing.

    • General_Effort@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Sort of. A camera with internet connectivity could automatically “notarize” photos. The signing authority would vouch that the photo (or other file) hasn’t been altered since the moment of signing. It wouldn’t be evidence that the photo was not manipulated before that moment.

      That could make, EG, photos of a traffic accident good evidence in court. If there wasn’t time to for manipulation, then the photos must be real. It wouldn’t work for photos that could have been taken at any time.

      You could upload a hash to the blockchain of a cryptocurrency for the same purpose. The integrity of the cryptocurrency would then vouch that the photo was unaltered since the upload. But that’s not cost-effective. You could even upload the hash to Reddit, since it’s not believable that they would manipulate timestamps to help some random guy somewhere in the world commit fraud.

    • conicalscientist@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      This is the one area where blockchain could have been useful instead of greater-fool money schemes. A system where people can verify provenance of images or videos pertaining to matters of importance such as news stories. All reputable journalism already attributes their photos anyways. Cryptographic signing is just taking it to a logical conclusion. But of course the scary word ‘china’ is involved here therefore we must only contrarian post.

    • Dem Bosain@midwest.social
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      4 days ago

      No, I don’t want my photos digitally signed and tracked, and I’m sure no whistleblower wants that either.

      • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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        4 days ago

        Of course not. Why would they? I don’t want that either. But we are considering the actions of an authoritarian system.

        Individual privacy isn’t relevant in such a country. However, it’s an interesting choice that they implement it this way.

      • umami_wasabi@lemmy.ml
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        4 days ago

        That’s a different thing. C2PA is proving a photo is came from a real camera, with all the editing trails. All in a cryptographic manner. This in the topic is trying to prove what not real is not real, by self claiming. You can add the watermark, remove it, add another watermark of another AI, or whatever you want. You can just forge it outright because I didn’t see cryptographic proof like a digital sign is required.

        Btw, the C2PA data can be stripped if you know how, just like any watermarks and digital signatures.

        • snooggums@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Stripping C2PA simply removes the reliability part, which is fine if you don’t need it. It is something that is effective when present and not when it isn’t.

          • General_Effort@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            It’s never effective. At best, you could make the argument that a certain person lacks the wherewithal to have manipulated a signature, or gotten someone else to do it. One has to hope that the marketing BS does not convince courts to assign undue weight to forged evidence.

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      4 days ago

      Apart from the privacy issues, I guess the challenge would be how you preserve the signature through ordinary editing. You could embed the unedited, signed photo into the edited one, but you’d need new formats and it would make the files huge. Or maybe you could deposit the original to some public and unalterable storage using something like a blockchain, but it would bring large storage and processing requirements. Or you could have the editing software apply a digital signature to track the provenance of an edit, but then anyone could make a signed edit and it wouldn’t prove anything about the veracity of the photo’s content.

      • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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        4 days ago

        Hm, that’s true there’s no way to distinguish between editing software and photos that have been completely generated. It only helps if you want to preserve and modified photos. And of course, I’m making assumptions here that China doesn’t care very much about privacy.

    • blurryface@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      They plan to ban hating on the supreme leader.

      China is long ahead with that so maybe there is hope.

  • Jin@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    China, oh you Remembering something about go green and bla bla, but continue to create coal plants.

    The Chinese government has been caught using AI for propaganda and claiming to be real. So I don’t see it happening within the Chinese government etc.

  • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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    3 days ago

    Stable Diffusion has the option to include an invisible watermark. I saw this in the settings when I was running it locally. It does something like adds a pattern that is easy to detect with machines but impossible to see. The idea was that you could check an image for it before putting it into training sets. Because I never needed to lie about things I generated I left it on.

  • 2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de
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    4 days ago

    Will be interesting to see how they actually plan on controlling this. It seems unenforceable to me as long as people can generate images locally.

    • umami_wasabi@lemmy.ml
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      3 days ago

      That’s what they want. When people doing it locally, they can discredit anything as AI generated. The point isn’t about enforability, but can it be a tool to control narative.

      Edit: it doesn’t matter if people actually generating locally, but if people can possibly doing it. As long as it is plausible, the argument stands and the loop completes.