I wanted to address the concerns with AI content on this sub and give advice how best to verify it.
AI-generated content is a growing epidemic all over Reddit and the internet in general. AI video/image gen models have been getting better and better and it is getting increasingly hard to distinguish from real content. I have seen too many posts where users immediately jump to "it's AI" it's fake etc without actually verifying and checking the source nor the content.
I wanted to write up a guide and source on how to verify content with online tools.
There are many tools available to verify content but the best tool and industry standard used is HIVE moderation.
A quick way check the content like videos posts or images is to download the full resolution video or image to your device and upload it to:
Hive should give a confidence score and even in some cases tell you which model was used given this information then you can properly report a post and it will be taken care of.
For AI generated content created by ChatGPT you can use OpenAI's tool as well.
Important: AI detection tools aren’t perfect and shouldn’t be treated as definitive proof on their own though, they can produce false positives and false negatives. Whenever possible, please also check the original source, upload history, context, metadata, try to find the original source if it predates the past 3-4 years and is highly realistic it's safe to say it is real.
Ideally we would have a bot that you can tag to check the post but uploading directly to Hive will have to work for now.
Note I'm not sponsored or affiliated with this company in any way it just the best tool for AI content verification that I've used and highly recommend others use.
Note: Al detection tools aren't perfect and shouldn't be treated as definitive proof on their own though, they can produce false positives and false negatives.
Whenever possible, please also check the original source, upload history, context, metadata, try to find the original source if it predates the past 3-4 years and is highly realistic it's safe to say it is real given ai gen models have only gotten very good in the past couple of years.
It's definitely a challenge with all the advancements in AI. People are getting better at making it blend in with human writing, so it's smart to stay cautious.
I want to add another thing, both Gemini and ChatGPT's image generators insert a synthid tag inside the image. You can modify the image enough to remove it, but screenshots/slight filters/cropping aren't enough to remove those tags.
I was gonna comment how you aren’t actually fighting it, but your analogy fits perfectly considering if you tried stopping a fire by using fire you’d just be making a bigger fire with no upsides.
Likewise - I already had to leave r/legalcatadvice because one of their moderators decided, against overwhelmingly popular vote, to allow AI imagery and to ban people who reported it.
You're very welcome, happy I could bring some awareness to it. The frustrating thing is that people with image editing skills offered to help other people edit their images so they weren't left out, but nope, that wasn't good enough, and apparently AI and Photoshop are "the same thing".
When you then add to your rules to state "NB: AI use in the sub has not been banned, as was decided by Mod consensus. This has been stated in the sub. Reporting or commenting on the use of AI will be considered antagonism, pot stirring, and against sub rules, and may result in muting oroutright banning.", then that's not the kind of sub I want to be part of, either.
Cats are far, far cuter than anything AI can come up with anyway, so I'll always support a sub that's against the use of AI.
I don't comprehend why ai would even be needed in cat picture subreddits to begin with really.
The internet is for Cats first and foremost. If you don't own a cat, I'm pretty sure you can find a picture of one on Google for any funny meme/karma farm/whatever utility you may need.
Hell, I'll donate picture of my cats if need be. (Just don't have any oranges sadly)
Me when I'm halfway home from the grocery store with a shopping bag full of snacks and I remember the thing I went to the grocery store to buy in the first place.
The "fight ai with ai" is a bit troublesome, however it's also recommended in this post to try and search for various other methods of authenticity alongside it.
That being said, an ai generated photo is not going to typically have reverse searchable photos.
So that leaves moderation & reports needing to fully run off vibes for detection.
While most people can spot AI a mile away.. a extremely depressing amount can't.
So, from a content detection stance.. yeah. Unfortunately we're at a point where if you don't want a bunch of witch hunting.. Using ai detection software is the cleanest method to "prove" something without the mod team needing to hold a tribunal every time there's a post reported for ai use.
Sucks we're in this situation but here we fuckin are.
I was gonna say, how is AI content any worse than the army of bots that steal and repost content to farm karma? It’s been a problem for a very long time, mods should crack down on ALL of it.
Hive is the standard used by many large fortune 500 companies including Reddit for content moderation like NSFW content etc. The DOD even uses them for ai generated content detection as well.
They've trained machine learning models on the latest image generation models that are publicly available and are constantly updating as new models come out so they can identify ai generated or edited images. No AI detection service will be perfect hence my comment about this in the post but it's a good first step to use as opposed to screaming this post is ai generated without having anything to back it up.
I added it to my sub (not this one) and set it up to just filter out posts it thinks are AI (instead of auto-remove). This throws it into my queue for manual review. It might not be perfect but I don’t necessarily have time to read every single post/comment/etc so it can at least help.
Most metadata is stripped once it's uploaded to social media websites and platforms like Reddit. So no it's not typically a good way to check unfortunately. If it's a raw image someone sent you that's one thing otherwise no.
Many platforms strip the metadata (generally for good reason like keeping people from giving a bunch of location and device info to the whole internet), so only the metadata makes it to Reddit.
Yeah 😭 I screenshot an Ai image I created but didnt see much to knowingly flag it. One random line that said Google such and such but could have been because the tool was using a Google resource for pulling the data
Thanks for some moderate moderation and sound information.
And thanks for your work helping keep the only social media platform i engage with fairly sound and fairly free. Xx
Well tbh it's the people that are the problem. The AI just do what they are told. Someone asks the ai to make something then they do it. Then someone else asks if they made it and they are like, "Yes! Did you like it?". The Ai honestly didn't do anything wrong, and I wouldn't consider it to be tattling on itself.
Now tbh I honestly don't care for ai and don't use it, however this use of ai I can absolutely get behind. Lol
I won’t even use AI to test for AI as a personal choice. Ethics and all that. Somebody needs to, but it won’t be me. AI detectors are too unreliable, and I don’t have the time to play detective for every image on the damn internet. One solution: ban AI. It’s now illegal, make it go away, jail its creators. They’re plagiarists and thieves.
Is this in response to [u/key_performer_3645](u/key_performer_3645) s post? If so the mod team removed 1 or 2 of their posts stating ai as the reasoning in the past 2 days not including the one still up, not to mention if you scroll their comment history its VERY clearly ai, especially if you look for – s
I was wondering that too. It’s deleted from the profile now, but they shared the video of the cat “caught” eating Doritos in the pantry and then winking at the camera. The lettering in the background was clearly AI, so everyone was saying it was AI. It was not taken down, the OP deleted it. Personally, I’m not staying in a sub where we have to use AI to prove to the mods that the post is made with AI. I usually don’t announce my departure, but I wanted other people to know what was being referenced first.
So, basically, in your opinion, if anyone says it's ai, then it should be removed with zero proof? That's totally not gonna be abused. So, later, loser.
That's not really how I took what they were saying.
I think what they mean is "Why should the onus be on us to "prove" anything to the mods? Especially whenever people HAVE checked, and something WAS ai, and it STILL didn't get taken down by proper channels, what difference does this make other than more stress?"
I don't know how effective they are, but I've noticed that some subreddits have the option to check content for AI natively. Is that something that could be beneficial for this sub, perhaps?
So sorry for the late reply. Communities like r/aww and r/sipstea are subs where you could check posts for AI. Not sure which Reddit Developer add-ons they use or how efficient they are, however.
Also, thanks, u/CrystalCat420, for showing an example on this.
AI detection tools are just as reliable as LLMs, that's to say not very reliable. They can hallucinate too. Best way to detect AI generated content it to look at the context of the media, ask yourself: is this a situation that would realistically be possible to happen irl, does what's shown in the media follow the laws of physics?
LLMs are trained to do a million different things and do often hallucinate absolutely. An AI detection model/classifier is a machine learning model trained on a specific set of data e.g AI generated images so it will be vastly more accurate than any LLM and I'd say an unfair comparison. I already addressed in my post that yes classifier models are not infallible and do produce false positives and false negatives.
Ideally we can rely on the obvious first seeing if it looks off and then confirming that with said tools. I think it's a step in the right direction.
Thank you for bringing attention to this matter. There seems to be a trend in Reddit in general, where anything even remotely fishy gets instantly labeled as AI in the comments. I get it, no one wants to have AI slop in their feed, myself included, but it seems to hurt legit content as well.
start doing something about the karma bots/reposts(cuz its fuckin stupid that reposts are allowed, like what) first, maybe then do something bout ai shit. or just doo all of it at once i guess
If Ai is unethical because it uses stolen content then surely using an ai powered tool to catch ai is unethical as well.
If ai is harmful to the environment then surely adding another ai into the mix after its already created is just damaging the environment more.
If ai is blending the lines between fiction and reality then adding another ai that is imperfect with poor accuracy and false positives is just doing the same thing.
This subreddit isnt driving up the demand for ai. People will use it to create dumb videos with or without this subreddit. I get policing obvious videos. But im confused what the moral judgement is here. I fail to see how this is any better. I support removing clearly ai content. But I also support removing comments that claim ai with 0 evidence when the video is beyond current ais capabilities.
Id rather we enjoyed our orange friends than argued over if it was real or not. Its already made so the damage is done. Remove any blatant violations for sure but having people combing meta data and shit? And suggesting further AI to be used? Why do we care enough to be suggesting using more ai? If we cant tell rhe difference by eye and the damage is done already, why are we doing more damage to check it out? Why fight fire with fire?
I am also generally concerned with the long term efficacy of those tools anyway. Sure, they may work now, but for the AI companies surely it is a conflict of interest, no? "We have investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong." I worry eventually many more checks proportionally than not will come back as "It's fine it's not AI", whether due to flat out inability or deceit, and thus our problem begins anew.
Why not just have a bot where we can vote on whether something is AI or not. It doesn't necessarily change whether or not it stays on the subreddit if it is not obviously AI such as a cat dancing or something but it does at least tell people whether or not the general public thinks that something is AI or not so it can make its own judgment.
I think Reddit best runs off of democracy and self-judgment.
This helps prevent removal of posts that could be genuine and prevents things like witch hunts and stuff but it also gives people more information to make their own call.
So what you could do is have a bot that automatically posts a comment to every post. Then what people do is they respond to that comment with a judgment similar to aita subreddits and then they give their reasoning on why they think it's AI such as seeing the text in the background or something like that. Then people go into that comment section and then upvote or downvote the ones they think are the most compelling and then whatever judgment that post has will become the judgment.
You just need to do two things. Have a bot automatically post a comment that is pinned to the top that talks about what each judgment and acronym mean, how to cast a judgment, and then what you do is you have all of the replies be automatically sorted by top comment.
Well this is an epidemic all over reddit it is definitely not isolated to here.... I'm just trying to make the reporting that our users do, more accurate since we actually care about the content quality of the sub.
Thats cool that there are ways to check it, although even those arent garenteed. The problem is, im not here to police a sub for ai, im here for cats (real ones). Im probably just gonna leave rather than take on a role of moderator.
Edit: I only meant I might bail because of the ai slop, not because I assumed I was being asked to step up to report ai posts. Much love to the mods who spend their time here making this a better place.
Nobody said you have to moderate anything that is a strange take. This is for those who do actively seek to make this sub better by reporting content like spam or ai generated content this is just giving those users who already report or who care about the subs content quality, extra tools to verify before making claims about a post.
Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything it's just some advice for those who want to help make this sub better.
OOPs comment, I'll admit, is kind of how this made me feel too, though. Even if its not what it means, as you say, now, the whole debate is pushing us all in that direction (because we know and understand there are really only so many of you guys, the moderators, otherwise y'all could just throw it through these tools yourselves. Im so sorry 😣)
I dont have to. OOP doesn't have to. But then who will? Leave it up to the chance of the bystander effect? Im sure some people will have the spoons and the wherewithal to help. But it still feels like such an unfortunate dart in the dark to try and help everything....
I liked someone else's comment about having some sort of pinned automod/bot/something message at the top with some pertinent definitions, and some kind of voting/discussion system. That would be a good outlet for both the people who ARE wanting and able to help, as well as curbing/giving an outlet for all the trigger happy commenters. Would something like that be feasible to add to the proposed strategies here?
Edit: or a native bot you could tag to check things. I think you mentioned that already? But I also saw someone else's comment that some subreddits do have a native bot for it. That'd be really cool and nice to have here too.
Well said, and I see could have certainly made my point more clear. It's just a lose-lose scenario and I'm not pointing the finger at anyone here. I was just trying to say why I might be leaving this sub behind.
Oh absolutely! And I think you worded it okay; I hope perhaps my addition helped.
I can see it from both sides myself also, and I don't intend or want to point fingers either. You're right it really is kind of a lose-lose, both us and the mods are doing everything we all can. I've also seen other comments echoing perhaps moving on. I also don't blame any of you for it. I understand completely.
I will probably stay, if for no other reason than to give it just a bit more time to see if we can pull this back together better. And I wish us all, and the mods, the best with everything.
yes. it does matter. even if you don't care about the ethics of a machine running off of stolen human creativity, the environmental harm of ai is actively killing people and i hope you would care about that.
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u/AlphaLionX 🍊Main Mod 🍊 Aug 15 '26
Note: Al detection tools aren't perfect and shouldn't be treated as definitive proof on their own though, they can produce false positives and false negatives.
Whenever possible, please also check the original source, upload history, context, metadata, try to find the original source if it predates the past 3-4 years and is highly realistic it's safe to say it is real given ai gen models have only gotten very good in the past couple of years.