Meta tags images as "Made with AI" if You Use Gen Fill

[SK321]

So, apparently Adobe has begun adding metadata to images that says they were made with AI (or at the very least, that AI was used) if you used Gen Fill at all. I realized this because some websites, such as Instagram, have begun automatically labeling any images I had used Gen Fill on as "Made with AI" based on the metadata Photoshop had added, without the option for me to remove the label.

I use Gen Fill to expand backgrounds a bit when I need to change the aspect ratio of an image (4x5 from a 2x3 for Instagram), or to more quickly and easily remove an unwanted object or blemish in photo I took and spent a lot of time and effort taking. I don't use it to create entirely made-up backgrounds or people. If I'd known my long hours setting up photo shoots, purchasing supplies, props, and more would all be given the label of "Made with AI" making my clients and other people think I'm just generating my photography, I would never have used Gen Fill in the first place. To me it's just been a quicker and better version of Content Aware Fill. 

So, for those of you who have had the same experience and, like me, don't want your work labeled as "Made with AI" when you've maybe used Gen Fill to remove a beer can from a photo, just export your photos as a bitmap, open them with Microsoft Paint and save them as a JPEG from there. It will remove the relevant metadata.

(subject edited by moderator to remove false information and replace it with correct information. Meta is adding that tag, not Photoshop, and they say  so in their help pages.)

Edit by OP: I appreciate the moderators not simply deleting this thread, because I do think this is a good discussion to have. I do believe my post clearly stated that the tag of "Made with AI" was created by Instagram (Meta) and that Photoshop was simply including an indicator (metadata/Content Credentials) with the image when it's saved out of Photoshop that showed some sort of AI was used. If the mods felt my original subject was false information, I can assure them that it was not intended to be.

I have also simply stopped using any AI tools in Photoshop for any photos I intend to post online. I'd rather take the extra time to edit my photos the way I have been for the last 25+ years than have my clients mistakenly think my photography is completely AI generated.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

@SK321 Instagram has false flags with their AI tagging service that has been all over the news since it started. But to your arguement about "Made with AI" - black and white, you did use AI on your image so it's being identified as having AI in it.

[SK321]

@SK321Instagram has false flags with their AI tagging service that has been all over the news since it started. But to your arguement about "Made with AI" - black and white, you did use AI on your image so it's being identified as having AI in it.

By @Kevin Stohlmeyer

"AI was used in this image" is completely different than "Made with AI". The latter would lead anyone to believe the image was completely AI generated. And as I said, I'll just go back to only using Content Aware Fill and doing my own adding/replacing if it's going to give my images that tag. If it had been made clear that your images would all be given that label if you used any AI at all, I would have never used the tool.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Is the notation wrong or false?

[SK321]

Is the notation wrong or false?

By @Kevin Stohlmeyer

I don't know. Without knowing exactly what the metadata from Photoshop is indicating I can't really answer that question. If the metadata is just saying "AI was used in this image", then no, the notation wouldn't be false. If the metadata is saying, "This image was created by AI", then yes, the notation would be false. 

My guess is that Photoshop is just indicating that AI was used in the image in some way and Instagram is the one using that notation to label the image as "Made with AI". I don't want my images being labeled as "Made with AI" if I literally used the Gen Fill to remove a rock on a sidewalk, for example. 

But again, if that's what will happen if I use Gen Fill at all, I'm just not going to use it for any images I plan to post to Social Media. I'd rather take the additional time to make those edits without Gen Fill than get that label.

[vanillalily]

Yes it is false. MADE with AI and EDITED with AI are not the same thing. They are distincely different. And using content awareness fill is AI, why isn't that flagged? Many of the features that have been in PS are AI and have been used for YEARS and are not flagged. To me that's the biggest issue. Everything that is AI should be flagged and "edited" should be the term used when a photo has a beer can removed, not "made" as they are not the same thing. 

[D Fosse]

I don't see how they're different. How big does an ai-generated area need to be before it's "made with ai"? 5%? 25%? Take your pick. A more relevant question is, does it alter the meaning and context of the original photo?

Content-aware fill is not generative ai. It does not use the generative Firefly engine that the other ai tools do.

Generative Expand, on the other hand, is. And it tells you so.

So I still maintain that if you don't want your image tagged as ai, then don't use ai tools. That's what we did only a couple of years ago.

[vanillalily]

Yes it does ALTER the photo, AKA EDIT.

Words matter.  The definition of said words matter as well. 

I also don't know where I said GENERATIVE AI, I said AI. And content awareness fill is AI. Fact. 

I'm not a photographer for instance, this whole argument isn't something that applies to me in my business, I don't need those tools for what I do. But a photographer TAKES THE PHOTO. That will not be MADE with AI. Regardless of changes made, it will always be EDITED with AI, not MADE. 

I do stand by that definitions matter. If they are going to tag it, then it should be accurate in what it's being tagged with. No other program I've heard of does this, probably so they don't make something seem like it's ALL AI when it's not. Clients don't understand the difference 9 times out of 10.

[QINGCHARLES]

I maintain that I paid for the tool, why can't I switch the tagging off? I can easily strip it, and I do, with exiftool. I wish I could patch it out of Photoshop.

[Conrad_C]

I maintain that I paid for the tool, why can't I switch the tagging off? I can easily strip it, and I do, with exiftool. I wish I could patch it out of Photoshop.

By @QINGCHARLES

The reason you can’t patch it out is because it’s commercial software. It’s rare for end users to be able to “patch out” anything they want in commercial software. If it’s a requirement for that to be possible, you can choose an open source tool where you can, by definition, freely patch anything. An option for that is an open source photo editor like the GIMP. Exiftool is open source software too.

For any commercial software, the fact that you “paid for the tool” guarantees nothing. The quote below is from the Adobe terms of use, but you’ll find language like it in the terms for pretty much any software that is commercial. (I added the bold formatting).

Unless stated in the Product Specific Terms, the Services and Software are provided “AS-IS.”…The Covered Parties further disclaim any warranty that (A) the Services and Software will meet your requirements or will be constantly available, uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free; (B) the results obtained from the use of the Services and Software will be effective, accurate, or reliable; (C) the quality of the Services and Software will meet your expectations; or (D) any errors or defects in the Services and Software will be corrected.

That said, Adobe does let users provide feedback publicly, and then can respond to it publicly, in the Ideas section of this community. There, many feature requests have been submitted and voted up by users. Adobe has put some of them into the software, and documents that in the release notes, linking back to the public Ideas thread where the change came from, so that there is some accountability.

If you want to be able to shut off all generative AI* (which I think is a reasonable idea), or at least have them change that “Made In” label, that Ideas forum would be a place to submit that feature request where it might have an effect (you might check to see if someone else already has).

*I know that you said you didn‘t bring up generative AI, but it is a fact that generative AI is the specific type that is causing the most controversy around rights, fakery, etc. today. Earlier types of AI in the software haven’t caused as much trouble, so it is actually important to make the distinction.

[QINGCHARLES]

I don't want to shut off Gen AI. I want it to work on all my photos, but I don't want the tags. I'm used to patching in/out features in executables from growing up in the 80s where it was a common thing to do. I think the easier solution for me is just to write a new image export plugin, which would solve this.

[Cegrix]

The tag on the image uploaded to Instagram says precisely, "Made with AI." When all you did was touch up an image, this is very misleading.

[SK321]

The tag on the image uploaded to Instagram says precisely, "Made with AI." When all you did was touch up an image, this is very misleading.

By @Cegrix

Totally agree.

[Lumigraphics]

"The tag on the image uploaded to Instagram says precisely, "Made with AI." When all you did was touch up an image, this is very misleading."

If you are deathly allergic to peanuts, is it very misleading for a restaurant to label a dish "Made with peanuts" if only a few were used in the recipe?

[SK321]

Typically, restaurants and food products will say "May contain peanuts", not "Made with peanuts."

Besides that, you're comparing labeling a product so a person doesn't have an allergic reaction or die to how a photo is labeled when some AI assistant tools were used. The two have nothing to do with one another and it's a complete non sequitur. 

[D Fosse]

These generative ai-tools are very easy to avoid. For minor retouching there is no reason to use any ai tools.

If you're expanding the canvas using ai, that's, well, using ai. You may want to use content aware fill instead.

[SK321]

I agree, but there should still be a distinction between the tag you get when you've used some AI tools to retouch a photo you took versus completely generating an image from scratch using AI. If an image is completely AI generated then "Made with AI" makes sense. If it's mostly your photo, but you used an AI tool to add a bit or replace something in the image it shouldn't still be labeled as "Made with AI". Something more granular such as "AI Was Used in This Image" or  "AI Tools Used in Retouching" would be more accurate. 

[Lumigraphics]

Your reply is very misleading.

[aprill6685079]

Also coming across this dilema. Don't have any answers yet but curious what people are talking about for this. 

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

https://helpx.adobe.com/au/creative-cloud/help/content-credentials.html

https://contentcredentials.org

https://contentauthenticity.org

https://c2pa.org

[Lumigraphics]

This is currently one of the unresolved questions around AI and imaging. What to label, how, and when. There are no easy answers.

[SK321]

This is currently one of the unresolved questions around AI and imaging. What to label, how, and when. There are no easy answers.

By @Lumigraphics

I totally agree with you. But, at the same time, Adobe was so proud of these new AI features in Photoshop and Lightroom. They've been touting them a lot and marketing them to everyday photographers out there making a living; alluding to saving time in their workflow, or being able to easily expand the background to photos when they wish they'd shot them a little wider, or being able to quickly and easily change the aspect ratio and fill in the background.

So, they market the new tools to professional photographers as a way to reduce their workflow, but then those same photographers are going to have their work labeled as "Made with AI" if they're just using the tools for the smallest of fixes, making their clients and potential clients think they're putting in little-to-no effort or just faking their photos. If the AI is just another tool, like the heal or clone stamp tool, why aren't are photos labeld as "Made with Photoshop" any time we use those? Again, I know a lot of this is on the social media sites and how they're choosing to use the metadata Adobe is putting in the images, but it makes me not want to use the AI tools at all.

[Lumigraphics]

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/30/554750939/france-aims-to-get-real-retouched-photo...

[SK321]

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/30/554750939/france-aims-to-get-real-retouched-photo...

By @Lumigraphics

See, that wouldn't really bother me, because most people know that almost every photo is retouched to some degree. I have no problem telling my clients that I retouch their photos. In fact, my skill at retouching is part of the reason they hire me. But, if I spent a bunch of time retouching photos in Photoshop and then all of my photos were labeled as "Made with Photoshop", that has a much different implication. It would sound like Photoshop did all the work, rather than me having 25+ years of experience with the program and knowing how to make my images look beautiful without looking fake or overdone.

[Conrad_C]

If the AI is just another tool, like the heal or clone stamp tool, why aren't are photos labeld as "Made with Photoshop" any time we use those?

By @SK321

In a way, they are already labeled that way and have been for a long time. An image saved by an editor such as Photoshop may have the application name in the metadata, regardless of which features you used. The metadata display in the picture below is from a non-Adobe application, but Photoshop wrote that metadata in there. This is on the Mac, but I would guess Windows Properties has also displayed the Software Agent metadata line for many years. (It might be called something different; I think it appears as “Application” in Adobe Bridge or Lightroom Classic.)

One major difference is that conventional metadata is easy to change. But Content Credentials are crytographically verified, what they claim is “tamper evident.”

About the Instagram “Made with AI” label, we have to be careful about thinking about that separately from what Photoshop writes into the file. Because word is that the Instagram “Made with AI” label is not directly connected to content authenticity metadata, but has more to do with some proprietary Instagram analyzer that seems to label an image “Made with AI” even if the image has no metadata at all. This misrepresentative labeling on the part of Instagram is the source of many complaints at the moment. I see some accounts I follow having to write something in the description like “Instagram says this is AI, but it isn’t, and it’s so frustrating.”

I agree that it might be necessary to have more granuarity in how the use of AI is described, because as you said, just expanding your own photo is a lot different than making up entirely new content.