Labelling Altered Images
The discussion
Nadia: Every image created or heavily altered by software should carry a visible label by law. Last month a fabricated flood photo of our town was shared thousands of times before anyone questioned it.
Jonas: Visible labels sound simple, but almost every photo is altered now. If a phone's camera brightens faces automatically, does that need a label too? The category collapses as soon as you try to define it.
Thandiwe: I'd approach it from the other direction. Instead of labelling the fakes, verify the real ones with an invisible signature from the camera, so news outlets can prove an image is unedited.
Nadia: But that leaves ordinary people with no clue, Thandiwe. Most of us don't check signatures, we just scroll.
Jonas: Thandiwe's idea actually answers my definition problem, though. You don't need to decide what counts as altered; you only need to show which images are provably original.
Thandiwe: And platforms could display a small tick for verified images automatically, so Nadia's scrolling user sees it without doing anything.
Nadia: A tick for verified images shown by default is something I could support, as long as the absence of a tick is explained clearly. I'd still want labels for fully synthetic pictures, but I accept the line is blurrier than I thought.