All AI-Generated Material Must Be Labeled Online, China Announces

In collaboration with a number of government ministries, the Chinese internet watchdog Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has announced that all AI-generated content on the internet will have to be labeled as such.

As Bloomberg reports, the new regulation will require any synthetic content to be identified, either explicitly in its description or via metadata encoding.

It's a major inflection point as governments attempt to shore up some control while the internet gets flooded with low-quality AI slop.

Regulators have long rung the alarm bells about tech being misused to spread disinformation and material intended to harm others.

Former president Joe Biden attempted to address the issue with an executive order in 2023, which has since been repealed by his successor Donald Trump. Instead of reining in the problematic use of generative AI, the current Trump administration has instead opened the gates, going as far as to instruct federal agencies to scrub AI guidelines and encourage them to use the tech more.

That's in sharp contrast to both China and the European Union, which have furthered rules about labeling AI-generated or manipulated content. Last year, the European Union passed the AI Act, the "first-ever legal framework on AI, which addresses the risks of AI and positions Europe to play a leading role globally."

Now China has followed suit, announcing a new set of rules requiring internet service providers to label AI-generated material.

"The Labeling Law will help users identify disinformation and hold service suppliers responsible for labeling their content," the CAC wrote in a statement, as translated by Bloomberg. "This is to reduce the abuse of AI-generated content."

As part of the new rules, app store operators will have to review labeling mechanisms to ensure they comply with the new regulations.

Even users will have to declare when they're posting AI-generated content, as the South China Morning Post reports. Those who alter AI content labels after the fact could face penalties.

But as AI-generated content becomes increasingly more difficult to tell from the real thing, questions remain regarding the effectiveness of AI-labeling regulations and how enforceable they really are.

And early attempts to address the issue have fallen flat. Last year, Meta attempted to roll out a "Made with AI" label on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. But the initiative failed right from the start, with users immediately noticing the feature was labeling real photos as being AI-generated.

Meanwhile, the tidal wave of AI slop on the internet has reached a fever pitch, strangling out entire platforms. Last month, Futurism found that Pinterest had been engulfed in a torrent of uncanny AI-generated slop, frustrating users.

The first six results for a simple search for "healthy recipe ideas" on the image-sharing website showed clear signs of having been generated by an AI. Only one was explicitly labeled as synthetic.

More on labeling AI: Pinterest Is Being Strangled by AI Slop

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