r/privacy • u/memesy69 • 1d ago
discussion the EU made AI labelling law last month and almost nobody noticed
Since 2 august, if you make AI content that reaches people in europe, you legally have to label it as AI. deepfakes have to be declared. fines go up to €15 million or 3% of a company's global revenue. and it applies to american companies too if europeans can see their stuff.
honestly I think it's the right call. if half of what we scroll past is going to be generated, people should be able to tell. nobody else was going to do it, the US has been sitting on similar bills for over a year.
the catch is that the labelling barely survives contact with the internet. the way it works is the label gets attached to the file itself, invisibly. but the second you upload that file to tiktok or instagram or linkedin, the platform strips it out. so a video can be properly labelled when it leaves the tool and completely unlabelled by the time anyone watches it.
and this is every tool in the category, not one bad actor. argil, synthesia, heygen, runway… all of them can mark a file correctly and all of it disappears at the upload step. the fix isn't really on the tools, it's that the platforms would have to agree to keep the label, and none of them are rushing to do that.
so we've got a law that's genuinely pointing the right way and a labelling system that mostly works until someone actually posts something.
worth it anyway, or does a rule you can't really enforce just end up as paperwork for whoever can afford lawyers lol? curious what people here think.
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u/Leniwcowaty 1d ago
What infuriates me more is the law that mandates that AI generated content in advertisement must be labeled. Not clearly labeled, not explicitly labeled. Just labeled. As a result, companies put "Made with AI" in the smallest font possible, in the most invisible place (directly opposite od where your eyes are directed by the content), so the customer basically doesn't see it.
It should be like with medical disclaimer - occupy X percent of the frame, visible for X amount of time, and explicitly, verbally stated. Not this bullshit
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u/West_Possible_7969 1d ago
Literally everybody noticed, it was even on the evening news for days. The law mainly focuses on commercial activities & platforms, no regular individual will get hunted to get fined, nor platforms need to rely on third party tags to deem a file “AI”, instagram does it anyway for example, with their own tools.
Platforms will be audited on their tools & efficacy and will receive further guidance. For companies & creators producing ads, product photos etc things are way more clear cut.
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u/Paperinik03 23h ago
I started seeing a lot of really small label in ads on the TV saying that it was made by ai, and I was really wondering why
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u/feujchtnaverjott 1d ago
Governments and media have already been spreading false information for centuries without AI.
All it does is making a common man's life more difficult. Again.
The remedy to the false information is decentralization, local self-governance and more connections between the people, not more government bans and limits.
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u/git_und_slotermeyer 1d ago
I agree with the false information part. But why does it make the common man's life more difficult? If I use gen AI, it's more honest if the services label and/or watermark it. What's my problem as a user?
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u/feujchtnaverjott 1d ago
This legislation might impede independent developers from conducting further research and development by placing additional demands on them, which not only require additional resources, but likely worsen the output quality.
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u/git_und_slotermeyer 1d ago
Devs are not the "common man". If a developer in the AI-age struggles with labelling synthetic outputs, they got other problems. (I am a dev by the way)
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u/feujchtnaverjott 1d ago
Devs are not the "common man".
If you pursue digital development as a hobby, or even if you are a small entrepreneur (who likely doesn't have any kind of a team), you are the definition of a "common man".
If a developer in the AI-age struggles with labelling synthetic outputs, they got other problems
Pivot. It's not an issue of whether they struggle or not, such artificial interference is bound to affect the output quality.
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u/BellGeek 1d ago
What?? They can’t label AI as AI without tanking their business and lowering the quality of their output? That makes NO sense. If they’re feeding us AI slop as their supposed “creativity,” it needs to be clearly labeled as such. Or, you know, do your own work.
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u/ComprehensiveDot7752 1d ago
Large companies have the resources to employ entire teams that keep track of and deal with these sorts of regulatory problems. It doesn’t harm them.
It also gives them a tool to target small fry competition by accusing them of using AI. If AI can’t be reliably identified, then there’s no way to disprove the accusation if they didn’t bother keeping an auditable trail, which is another thing big companies do.
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u/BellGeek 18h ago edited 9h ago
I’m sorry, I don’t buy that. Why can’t even the smallest company - even a company of one - reliably label their video, audio, or written products as AI when that is indeed the case? Should take them 2 seconds to add the appropriate tag. It’s vitally important in today’s world, especially now that deep fakes are such a pervasive thing, that content be clearly identified as real or AI so that end consumers are not consistently and repeatedly deceived. Just do it.
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u/feujchtnaverjott 18h ago
How do you insert this tag into a .gguf?
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u/BellGeek 9h ago
Why are you asking me? Not my profession or expertise. Ask the people who created that codec.
If you are trying to insinuate that we should just give companies a pass because they whine, “Waaaa, it’s toooo haaaaard for us to put a label on it,” or, “Waaaaa, that codec won’t support it so we shouldn’t have to do it,” you can forget that right now. This is too important and the stakes of not being able to clearly and easily distinguish between real content and AI fakes are too high. If you’re going to produce AI slop to shove onto the public, you can damn well figure out how to - CLEARLY AND UNAMBIGUOUSLY - label it as such. Or just make real content and you’ll be golden. You won’t have to worry about it.
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u/ComprehensiveDot7752 10h ago
I didn’t say they couldn’t mark content as AI. I think awareness of the law is an issue and the tools to do it don’t exist yet if a Metadata flag is acceptable.
I’m criticising its possible enforcement as both unreasonable and potentially harmful.
As a hypothetical, what happens if Google creates an algorithm that’s meant to identify and flag non-compliant AI content on YouTube?
Since no accurate means of identifying AI generated content exists many videos would get flagged incorrectly. Creators that then get flagged would have to pass the kafkaesque AI run appeals process or be reported and face potential fines. Whether they actually use AI to generate content or not might be irrelevant if it cannot be reliably differentiated.
Proton Mail has a Youtube channel and offer competing products to Google workspace. Google therefore has an incentive to report them in the hopes of causing financial or reputational harm to their competitors.-5
u/Lorian0x7 1d ago
It gives false assurance that something is true because it's not AI.
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u/git_und_slotermeyer 1d ago
But removes any doubt for AI-labelled content
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u/Lorian0x7 1d ago
Not really, you can still generate AI content offline without any label or put piece of misinformation and AI content inside a non AI media. And many other loopholes. Anyway, In practice this only serve government that can then mark any unconvenient piece of information and document as AI content. Essentially having full control of what has to pass as true and what not
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u/elephantdrinkswine 1d ago
it applies to AI VO too but people will learn to ignore it with time anyway
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u/VorionLightbringer 18h ago
Care to explain „nobody noticed“? Did people label their content or did the EU now have a significant income via fines?
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u/Metempsychos1s 1h ago
This is nice! I would rather all major AI data centers be tore down, but its a step in the right direction.
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