British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is pushing for nations to label artificial intelligence as capable of "catastrophic harm" at the AI Safety Summit the U.K. is hosting next month as it seeks to forge a common international approach on the rapidly advancing technology. Britain wants countries to sign up to a joint position that outlines particular concerns for AI's impact on cybersecurity and biotechnology, according to a draft communique circulated to attendees and seen by Bloomberg. Officials aim to hammer out final wording of the communique by Oct. 25, a separate document showed. "There is potential for significant, even catastrophic, harm, either deliberate or unintentional, stemming from the most dangerous capabilities of these AI models," according to the draft, dated Oct. 16.

With the boom of AI-generated text, images, and videos, both lawmakers and average internet users have been calling for more transparency. Though it might seem like a very reasonable ask to simply add a label (which it is), it is not actually an easy one, and the existing solutions, like AI-powered detection and watermarking, have some serious pitfalls. As my colleague Melissa Heikkilä has written, most of the current technical solutions "don't stand a chance against the latest generation of AI language models." Nevertheless, the race to label and detect AI-generated content is on. That's where this protocol comes in.