Google adds new feature to its image search to curb spread of information

The features become more crucial, especially in the present times when artificial intelligence tools have made the creation of photorealistic fakes trivial. According to a 2022 Poynter study, sixty-two percent of people believe they come across misinformation daily or weekly.

Announcing the features via a blog post, Google said “we’re expanding our ongoing work in information literacy to include more visual literacy and help people quickly and easily assess the context and credibility of images.”

Talking about the ‘About this image,’ the blog says that users will be able to see information like when the image and similar images were first indexed by Google, where it may have first appeared, and where else it’s been seen online (like on news, social, or fact checking sites).

“With this background information on an image, you can get a better understanding of whether an image is reliable — or if you need to take a second look,” the blog post says.

For example, with About this image feature, users will be able to see that news articles pointed out that this image depicting a staged moon landing was AI-generated.

In addition, Google will mark every AI-generated image created by its tools as such. The tech firm is also working with other platforms and services to make sure they add the same markup to the files they put out. 

Creators and publishers will be able to add similar markups, so you’ll be able to see a label in images in Google Search, marking them as AI-generated, the blog states. At present, Google is working with Midjourney and Shutterstock.

The goal is to ensure that all AI content that appears in search results is flagged as such.