Adobe to offer free app to help with labeling AI-generated content

(Reuters) – Adobe said on Tuesday it will offer a free web-based app starting next year, aimed at helping the creators of images and videos to get credit for their work used in AI systems.

    Since 2019, Adobe and other technology companies have been working on what the firms call “Content Credentials,” a sort of digital stamp for photos and videos around the web to denote how they were created.

TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, has already said it will use Content Credentials to help label AI-generated content.

    San Jose, California-based Adobe said it will offer a free service to allow the creators of photos and videos to affix Content Credentials to their work.

In addition to indicating that they authored the content, the creators can also use the free app to signal if they do not want their work to be used by AI training systems that ingest huge amounts of data, the company said.

    The use of data in AI training systems has sparked legal responses in multiple industries, with publishers such as the New York Times suing OpenAI, while some other firms have opted to work out licensing deals.

    As yet, no large AI company has agreed to abide by Adobe’s system for transparency. In a release, Adobe said it was “actively working to drive industry-wide adoption” of its standards.

    “By offering creators a simple, free and easy way to attach Content Credentials to what they create, we are helping them preserve the integrity of their work, while enabling a new era of transparency and trust online,” Scott Belsky, chief strategy officer and executive vice president for design and emerging products at Adobe, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)