Google is creating a virtual watermark to recognise AI-generated photographs. Google subsidiary Deepmind’s SynthID watermark can detect AI-created images.
Humans cannot perceive watermarks embedded in photos, but AI detection tools can.
DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis suggested the tool may be a Chrome extension or browser embed. None of the above is sure yet.
AI chatter has increased recently, but so have disinformation and other concerns. Pope Francis wore a puffy jacket on social media a few months ago. The discovery that the image was phony highlighted concerns about AI image generators and their potential misuse by mischief-makers.
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Given that AI is quickly improving, Google and six other businesses (Amazon, Anthropic, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and Open AI) agreed to limit AI risks. The biggest thing the firms intended was for watermarks to help internet users spot AI graphics.
AI-generated graphics are an extreme sport to identify. The rise of image-generation tools online hasn’t helped. Consider Midjourney, a popular 14+ million-user choice.
Google’s SynthID aims to make that more manageable, but DeepMind says it may not be “foolproof against extreme image manipulation. In a BBC interview, DeepMind head of research Pushmeet Kohli explained that their algorithm transforms images in a problematic way for humans to notice.
He also said the watermark stays on the picture even if it is cropped or edited. On the Internet, it is customary to crop or edit images with watermarks.
“You can change the colour, brightness, and even resize it… “[DeepMind] will still be able to tell it was made by AI,” Kohli added.
Kohli also said this was an experimental start and that the more people used it, the more information DeepMind could get about how well it worked.
Google’s Duet AI is here
Duet AI, the creative AI tool Google announced at this year’s I/O conference, is now available. Duet AI will help users with a variety of jobs in a way that is similar to Microsoft’s CoPilot.
They include writing copy, finding new ideas, scraping email threads and calendar invites for important information, and making images for charts and slides. It works with all the Google Workspace apps, such as Gmail, Meet, Docs, and Slides. The tool can also summarize Google Meet conversations.
Clients of Workspace can try Duet AI for free for up to 14 days and with up to 10 people. Google hasn’t said how much this product will cost yet, but they should do so soon.