It can happen, during wanderings on the social network WhatsApp, that we sometimes come across images or photos whose veracity is sometimes questionable. To try to discover its origin, until now you had to download it, then launch a search in Google to find out where it comes from or if it is a “real” image. With the advent of artificial intelligence, “false” images are becoming more and more numerous (in fact, Gemini has just launched Imagen 3, for this specific purpose), and it sometimes becomes difficult to disentangle the true from false. It also happens that certain images are taken out of context. In short, disinformation is becoming more aggressive than ever, and to remedy it, WhatsApp is offering the beginnings of a solution.
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What to combat misinformation and general confusion linked to AI
We therefore learn via WaBetaInfo that WhatsApp is currently testing a functionality to verify the authenticity of images received by users on the platform. So, when opening the image, pressing the three dots at the top right of the screen, a new option has been added to the WhatsApp beta. This button is called “Search the web”, and therefore allows you to launch a Google search directly from the image received.
With this feature, WhatsApp provides users with a way to verify the authenticity of an image, for example to determine whether it was created by artificial intelligence. But that’s not all: it also offers the possibility of comparing images or similar sources to see if their context presented as part of the WhatsApp message is the correct one. For example, it happens that old images are used to illustrate a recent event, which is misleading: with this method, it will be possible for the user to ensure whether the context is correct. Furthermore, WhatsApp guarantees confidentiality by not storing or processing these images. So even if it is sent to Google for a search, it remains private and secure.
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