Consumer Reports submitted testimony on Washington state’s bill regarding AI content provenance requirements, H.B. 1170.
This bill aims to tackle a growing problem for consumers in Washington: differentiating between authentic and AI-generated content online. Consumers increasingly encounter deceptive AI content online, including fraud and misinformation. HB 1170 would create a labeling standard by build upon voluntary provenance standards that major tech companies are currently developing, such as those proposed by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA).
The bill largely does three things. First, it requires generative AI providers with large user bases to provide a free tool to detect whether a piece of content was made or altered with their product. Second, these generative AI providers need to provide an option in their product for users to add a “manifest disclosure”—a label of some kind that is perceptible to a normal consumer, that identifies the content as AI generated, and that is extraordinarily difficult to remove. Lastly, covered generative AI providers must include latent disclosures in the content they generate.
However, in order for the bill to be effective and enforceable, CR urged the committee to make some revisions. CR’s feedback focused on four concrete revisions related to:
- Protecting consumers’ personal data
- Clarifying content of manifest and latent disclosures
- Ensuring that licensing is not a loophole
- Tightening exempt product categories
For more, see the full letter linked above.