Meta Develops Tool to Detect AI-Generated Images with Invisible Watermarks

Meta is working on a tool to ID images and video created with its new image generation model, Muse Image. The company showed off a preview of the web-based tool that can check for the invisible watermarks used by the new model.

This watermarking system, called Content Seal, remains in place "even when cropped, compressed, resized, or screenshotted," Meta explains in a blog post. "We're previewing a detection tool that lets you check whether an image carries a Content Seal watermark, providing an initial way to help you better understand if an image was made with Meta AI."

Content Seal seems to be a somewhat new approach for Meta. The version that's part of Muse Image is proprietary, though the company has previously released open-source versions of the tech, Meta told Engadget. Meta's new models don't include any visible watermarks, like some previous versions of Meta AI that added a small logo to the bottom right corner.

For now, Meta AI's detection abilities are limited to images that are created or edited with Muse Image, though the company said it plans to expand Content Seal watermarks to AI-generated and edited videos as well. Meta is also working on a separate video generation model called Muse Video that will be "coming soon."

I tried out the new detection feature on images I created today with Meta AI and the web-based tool was able to detect a watermark for edited images and entirely AI-made creations (like the one pictured above). It also found the watermark in screenshots of my images. "A positive result means that the image was generated or edited using the Meta AI app or meta.ai," the company explains in an FAQ. "A negative result means it is unlikely that the image was processed using Meta AI app or meta.ai."

Interestingly, Meta AI's new detection abilities don't seem to be part of the Meta AI app yet. When I asked Meta's app-based assistant about an image the web tool had identified as AI-made, it replied that it did not have the ability to check. "I can't tell you definitively if this specific image was made with Meta Al just by looking at it," it said. "Meta Al doesn't automatically watermark images, and I don't have a tool that can detect which Al model made an existing image."

Meta has previously faced some criticism for how it labels and identifies AI-generated material in its apps. The Oversight Board told the company earlier this year that it was "concerned" that Meta was "inconsistently implementing" digital watermarks on AI content created by its own tools.

The new feature does still seem to have some other limitations, though. Content Seal is not compatible with SynthID or C2PA Content Credentials, two established watermarking methods used by other companies. The web-based feature was unable to identify images created or edited with earlier versions of Meta's AI models in my testing. When I added images created in older chats with Meta AI, it was unable to tell me if the image was made with its AI. The feature also appears, for some reason, to be subject to Meta's rate limits. After uploading a handful of examples, I was alerted that I had reached my "daily limit on identification checks."