Google has announced the arrival of a new image search tool that will allow you to know the origin of an image on the web as well as the sites where it appears. Thanks to this, it will be easier to identify fake images generated by AI.
With the rapid progress of artificial intelligence, it is currently difficult to distinguish between real images and those generated by artificial neural networks.
Thus, photos of Pope Francis had gone around the world, dressed in a down jacket worthy of the most blingbling rappers, and many had been fooled by these images generated by the AI Midjourney, which reveals just as well what look like the Simpsons characters in real life. As such, Tom’s Guide has put together a guide to help you recognize images generated by artificial intelligence.
Fortunately, thanks to Google, these questions will soon be bad memories.
Google gives the keys to recognize an image generated by AI
The search engine will roll out a new tool in its image search section called “About this image”. It will be a drop-down menu similar to the one present in the usual search results, by clicking on the three small dots to the right of the address of a site.
This menu will give the same information as performing a reverse image search currently. When uploading an image from unknown provenance to Google Chrome, a menu option is displayed to find out when this image was first indexed by Google, where it first appeared on the web as well as the sites where it has since appeared.
In the example above, the user searches for “alunissage“, find a picture of a fake moon landing, then click the “about this picture“. The tool then shows how the image appeared in AI debunking articles. Conversely, it will be able to show that the image first appeared on trustworthy news sites like Tom’s Guide, proving its authenticity.
In another effort along these lines, Google also announced that its own generative AI tools will soon include metadata in every image indicating that it was created by an AI.
To read: Midjourney: the image generator ends free trials, there are too many abuses
For now, Google plans to launch the “About this image” tool in the summer of 2023, but only for English searches in the United States. We can hope that France will follow soon, to limit the dissemination of fake news supported by photos generated by AI.
