Google appears to have taken its role of web policing quite seriously. Having first waxed eloquent about targeting misinformation over the Internet, the company has now launched a set of online tools that can help users verify an image’s history, metadata and context around which it was published originally.
So, the next time you get a video or an image on your Whatsapp or via social media, Google says it would be able to provide contextual information that could potentially prevent false information from spreading. The “About this Image” features were announced earlier this year, but now Google is making it available to all English speakers worldwide.
What’s changing for the users?
The set of tools allows users to not just understand when the image was indexed by Google search but also how people have described it on other websites. The company said the metadata will also clarify whether the image is AI-generated. Readers would recall that earlier this month, Adobe, Microsoft, Nikon and Leica had released a symbol to mark AI images.
Users can access the new set of image verification tools by clicking on the three-dot menu over Google Images results. There is also the option of clicking on “more about this image” on the “About this result” tool available on the same menu. If this looks a tough act to follow, no worries as Google is exploring easier ways to access the tools.
The company also announced that approved journalists and fact-checkers would be allowed to upload or copy image URLs to learn more about them within their own tools using the FaceCheck Claim Search API. This feature was rolled out in the beta test phase earlier in June to allow users to check references and other details of an image.
How AI could make Google’s tasks easier
There are also reports of Google using generative AI to help with the description of image sources. Users who’ve opted-in to use its Search Generative Experience (SGE) will show AI-generated information about sites in the “more about this page” section. This data will include citations of the page or website on other high quality websites.
Given the rise in AI-generated content, companies are coming out with tools to help users identify the real from the machine-generated. Adobe first came out with a toolkit to help apps and websites verify image creds. Later X (formerly Twitter) brought Community Notes as an outsourced fact-checking program.
Gen AI could also serve up smarter ads
Of course, the same set of technologies could also be used by Google to create AI-based ads that could pop up and help the company grow its search ads business, which continues to be its cash cow, in spite of attempting to grow other lines of business such as cloud and hardware. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed that Google was experimenting with native ad formats that could be suitable for the SGE and customized to every step of the search journey.
Of course, it’s early days of the AI-based search journey but Pichai believes that this shift from traditional search to the new one is just a matter of time. On the earnings call, he said the company aims to strengthen its AI teams on the organic side as well as on the ad side to drive the right experience for users.
The company had introduced AI-powered search during the Google I/O developer conference held in May with the features first becoming available in the US before expanding to Japan and India in August. A good example could be the best beaches in Goa search showing a custom ad from a travel experience within the SGE with a “sponsored” tag attached to it.
