From AI-generated images to manipulated videos, it’s common to come across misleading media. Today we’re piloting a feature that puts a superpower into contributors’ hands: Notes on Media
Notes attached to an image will automatically appear on recent & future matching images. pic.twitter.com/89mxYU2Kir
— Community Notes (@CommunityNotes) May 30, 2023
Twitter unveiled a new feature called “Notes on Media,” which should allow Twitter Community Notes users to add information dedicated to questionable images on the platform.
The fast advancements in AI give way to the birth of complex image generators, allowing people to produce realistic images that often result in misinformation online. With this, different platforms are trying to catch up by rolling out various tools that could control the growing fake news problems. That includes Twitter, which recently shared the pilot of Noted on Media under its Community Notes program.
The tool is specifically designed for adding information related to an image, and the notes will appear on recent and future matching images. According to Twitter, contributors with a Writing Impact of 10 or above will see a new option to leave notes on images regardless of which post they are featured in.
“Raters and readers will see notes that authors marked as ‘about the image’ slightly differently, so it’s clear to everyone that they should be interpreted as about the media, not the specific Tweet,” Twitter added. “Ratings can help identify cases where a note may not apply to a specific Tweet.”
According to Twitter, the tool currently only supports posts with a single image, but it shared that it has plans to expand it to tweets with multiple pictures and even videos.
The feature’s rollout arrives as Twitter continues to battle misinformation, which is being worsened by the paid Blue subscription that gives others a way to pay for a verification checkmark. Even climate scientists find the issue — specifically hostile climate change denialism — growing, pushing some to leave the platform. Twitter, nonetheless, is not the only one dealing with this. Misinformation has also been prevalent on TikTok and Meta’s (which reportedly laid off engineers working on its new anti-misinformation tool) platforms. And with the arrival of AI tools capable of creating realistic content, tech platforms have no other option but to beef up their anti-misinformation initiatives.
