Meta, like other leading tech companies, has spent the past year promising to speed up deployment of generative artificial intelligence. Today it acknowledged it must also respond to the technology's hazards, announcing an expanded policy of tagging AI-generated images posted to Facebook, Instagram, and Threads with warning labels to inform people of their artificial origins. Yet much of the synthetic media likely to appear on Meta's platforms is unlikely to be covered by the new policy, leaving many gaps through which malicious actors could slip. "It's a step in the right direction, but with challenges," says Sam Gregory, program director of the nonprofit Witness, which helps people use technology to support human rights. Meta already labels AI-generated images made using its own generative AI tools with the tag "Imagined with AI," in part by looking for the digital "watermark" its algorithms embed into their output.

Levi's is partnering with an AI company on computer-generated fashion models to "supplement human models." Although that sounds noble on the surface, Levi's is essentially hiring a robot to generate the appearance of diversity while ridding itself of the burden of paying human beings who represent the qualities it wants to be associated with its brand. Levi Strauss is partnering with Amsterdam-based digital model studio Lalaland.ai Founded in 2019, the company's mission is "to see more representation in the fashion industry" and "create an inclusive, sustainable, and diverse design chain." It aims to let customers see what various fashion items would look like on a person who looks like them via "hyper-realistic" models "of every body type, age, size and skin tone."

Earlier this month you may have seen a website named ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com doing the rounds, which uses AI to generate startlingly realistic fake faces. Just head to the site and click on who you think is the real person! It was set up by two academics from the University of Washington, Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom, both of whom study how information spreads through society. They think the rise of AI-generated fakes could be trouble, undermining society's trust in evidence, and want to educate the masses. "When a new technology like this comes along, the most dangerous period is when the technology is out there but the public isn't aware of it," Bergstrom tells The Verge. "That's when it can be used most effectively."