A new push just landed to slap AI labels on basically everything you scroll past online. A bipartisan trio of senators, Brian Schatz, John Curtis, and Mark Warner, brought back the AI Labeling Act this week, and it's already pulling support from groups like SAG-AFTRA and the Songwriters Guild.
The idea is pretty straightforward. Any AI-generated audio, video, or image would need a visible tag, plus a machine-readable marker showing which system made it and when. Big platforms, meaning anything pulling in 10 million monthly US users or more than $1.5 billion a year, would have to flag that content too, and stripping the tags out would be illegal. Chatbots would also have to admit they're not human.
Enforcement falls to the FTC, while NIST would build out the actual technical standards for labeling and detection. This isn't even the first attempt, either, since Schatz tried something similar back in 2023 with a different partner, and it went nowhere.
Meanwhile, platforms aren't exactly waiting around for Congress to catch up. Tidal just announced it'll badge fully AI-made tracks and cut off royalties on them, and Deezer says it's seeing something like 75,000 AI tracks show up daily now.
The idea is pretty straightforward. Any AI-generated audio, video, or image would need a visible tag, plus a machine-readable marker showing which system made it and when. Big platforms, meaning anything pulling in 10 million monthly US users or more than $1.5 billion a year, would have to flag that content too, and stripping the tags out would be illegal. Chatbots would also have to admit they're not human.
Enforcement falls to the FTC, while NIST would build out the actual technical standards for labeling and detection. This isn't even the first attempt, either, since Schatz tried something similar back in 2023 with a different partner, and it went nowhere.
Meanwhile, platforms aren't exactly waiting around for Congress to catch up. Tidal just announced it'll badge fully AI-made tracks and cut off royalties on them, and Deezer says it's seeing something like 75,000 AI tracks show up daily now.
