Major social media platforms in China have introduced labels for AI-generated content to comply with a law drafted by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC).
On Monday, September 1, the new regulations took effect, making users of WeChat, Douyin, Weibo and RedNote see such labels on posts.
As reported by the South China Morning Post, these labels indicate the use of generative AI in text, images, audio, video and other types of material.
WeChat, the messaging platform, has told users they must proactively apply labels to their AI-generated content. They have also prohibited the removal and tampering of labels that the platform applies itself.
ByteDance's Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, similarly urged users to apply a label to every post that includes AI-generated material.
Meanwhile, Weibo has added the option for users to report "unlabelled AI content" when they see something that should have such a label.
Mandatory labels for AI content could help people have a better understanding of when they are seeing AI slop and/or misinformation instead of something authentic.
Some US companies that provide genAI tools offer similar labels and are starting to bake such identifiers into hardware.
Google's Pixel 10 devices are the first phones that implement C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) content credentials right inside the camera app.
