Instagram’s AI detection is a mess (again)

Meta is back to adding AI labels on original photos, while not tagging AI images it should.

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Meta is back to adding AI labels on original photos, while not tagging AI images it should.

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

Instagram’s visible AI labels are supposed to help people quickly spot synthetically generated content at a glance. Over the last few weeks, however, users have been reporting that the system has gone haywire. They say Meta has been automatically applying an “AI Content” label to images that they didn’t create or edit using generative AI tools. Meanwhile, actual AI imagery is slipping through the cracks, leaving the impression that nothing can be trusted on Instagram at all.

The precise causes of this tagging seem to vary. Many people said the label appeared on images that were edited using tools like Canva’s Background Remover or with negligible use of blemish-fixing tools. One user on Threads said Instagram was applying the label “every time there is bg remover involved,” and another user said it appeared after they used Canva to remove “a speckle” from their photo, resulting in the entire image being flagged on Instagram as AI. In other cases, the causes are even less clear.

If this labeling mishap sounds familiar then you may recall that a similar issue blighted photography on Instagram with a “Made by AI” label in 2024, a few months after the feature was released. That February, Meta announced it would scan images for IPTC and C2PA metadata , which can prove with reasonable certainty whether generative AI was used to create or manipulate them. But it’s always been vague about its methods. In 2024, the detection system reportedly swept up pictures whose Adobe metadata indicated they had been retouched with generative AI tools, even if the changes were extremely minor and substantively resulted in the same photograph. Meta then promised to tweak its labeling approach to better reflect “the amount of AI used in an image.” It also said it uses “industry standard indicators that other companies include in content from their tools,” but there isn’t any recent information available about what they are, or how and when it scans for them. Meta didn’t respond to a request for clarification.

The recently reported erroneous labels don’t have a clear link to generative AI usage. While features like background removal do often use machine learning, it’s the same assistive AI variety that apps like Photoshop have used in object selection and removal tools for over a decade — not the generative text-to-picture tools typically associated with deceptive AI imagery.

At least some of Instagram’s recent AI labeling mishaps appear to be Canva’s fault. After flagging the Background Remover tagging concerns, content strategist Jess Bruno reports that Canva came back to her with an explanation: Some of the design platform’s assistive AI tools “were being tagged as generative.” The design platform told Bruno that its tools are now tagging correctly. A message on Canva’s background removal help page also says that using the tool “doesn’t add Canva’s AI-generated content metadata to your design,” though it’s unclear if that note is new, and Canva didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Yet some Threads users are reporting that using Canva’s Background Remover still results in their images getting tagged, despite Canva claiming to have resolved the issue on its end. Other Threads users also report that none of the images they edited using the tool prior to it being fixed got tagged by Instagram, nor did the tool apply C2PA metadata that Meta supposedly uses to detect AI-generated content.

Out of all the tests I ran to see what would make the label appear on Instagram, it was only applied on images I edited or fully generated using the Meta AI app.

There are also reported cases of AI tagging where Canva’s Background Remover was reportedly never used at all . One user found that Meta applied the tag on an image that had been poisoned — or subtly tweaked by a system that’s designed to make images useless for AI training and/or degrade the AI models they’re fed to — and didn’t tag an unpoisoned version of the same content.

The AI Content tag was also automatically applied to recent photos posted to Instagram by About Face, a cosmetics company founded by the singer Halsey. When a commenter inquired about the AI tag , the brand’s unnamed social manager said that no AI was used to create the images. “This photo was taken on my iPhone and then slightly edited by myself in the photo app. Our brand uses real artist[s] and real people to create everything you see across all our platforms,” reads the About Face reply.

I reached out to About Face to clarify which tools in the iPhone Photos app were used, but the company has yet to respond. That said, only a handful should add generative AI metadata to photographs: Spatial Reframing, Extend, and updated Clean Up added in iOS 27 . These tools use Apple Intelligence and get embedded with Google’s invisible SynthID watermark; the first two add new generative elements, while the third lets users remove distracting objects or people. The tagged images don’t have SynthID embedded, according to Google’s Gemini-based verification, but even if those Apple Intelligence tools were used, it’s not clear why the label says it detected signals that “typically identifies content that was entirely AI-generated instead of content that was only modified with AI.”

Seriously, what AI signals is Meta actually scanning for? Companies often obscure exact details of their moderation systems to prevent bad actors from gaming the system, but right now, ordinary users are reasonably confused.

The only signal that I definitely know will currently trigger Instagram to apply an AI Content label is the one applied by Meta’s own generative AI systems. I ran my own tests of most of the tools above, uploading photos that were edited using Canva’s Background Remover, Photoshop’s background erasing tool, Adobe’s Firefly generative AI features, Google’s Nano Banana model in Gemini, and iOS Apple intelligence features. Some were fully generated, and I confirmed that several of these included C2PA and SynthID signals. In my case, however, Meta didn’t label any of it.

I posted the pictures on a brand-new Instagram account I set up with minimal information, and I published them in quick succession. I couldn’t have tried harder to act like a bot or AI farm, which you’d think would be a prime contender for what Meta should be looking for. Yet even after Meta announced crackdowns on AI accounts last week, it wasn’t tagged as an AI-generated profile, nor were the pictures labeled then. At this point, they’ve been live and fully public for almost two weeks.

The results have left me questioning if there is any sense in how Meta is applying “AI Content” tags. They’re supposed to make it easier to trust what you see on Instagram, but at this point, I wouldn’t even trust the labels themselves.