Do tools that claim to detect AI fakes work?

Artificial intelligence detectors are increasingly used to check the veracity of content online. We ran more than 1,000 tests that found several strengths but plenty of weaknesses, writes Stuart Thompson from New York

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Content generated by artificial intelligence has become so lifelike that it’s often impossible to tell whether a video or an image floating around social media is real or fake.

Enter the AI detector.

More than a dozen online tools claim they can tell the difference between what's real and what's Al by looking for hidden watermarks, composition errors and other digital clues.

The reality is more mixed, according to a battery of tests conducted by The New York Times. While many tools did a good job detecting some AI content, they were not accurate enough to offer users complete confidence.

The findings suggest that these detectors can help confirm suspicions about Al-generated media, but it is hard to rely on any of them to make definitive rulings. That presents fresh challenges for internet users and fact-checkers trying to manage the Al fakery that has flooded social media in recent months.

Overall, we found that any conclusions drawn by the tools should be supported by other research, like details in official photographs or news reports.

Many people nevertheless see the detection tools, which now analyse not just imagery but also video and audio, as powerful arbiters of truth at a crucial moment when Al-generated content is coursing through social media and deceiving users during breaking news moments.

The tools are being adopted by banks and insurance companies trying to spot Al-powered fraud, by teachers looking for plagiarism, and by internet sleuths trying to verify images and videos circulating on social media.

“You're never going to have a detection tool that is able to 100% detect whether Al has been used in text, images, video, whatever form it is,’ said Mike Perkins, a professor at British University Vietnam who studied AI detectors and found that text detectors were unreliable. As the AI generators improve, he said, AI detectors will struggle to catch up, creating an “arms race.”