Ammon News - You could soon have a much easier time detecting Artificial Intelligence (AI) on WhatsApp.

The keen-sighted team at WABetaInfo spotted that the Meta-owned chat app is developing an AI content label that lets admins — someone holding permissions for a group, community, or channel — flag photos and videos created using AI tools, so followers know exactly what they're seeing. It appears to be in the works for both Android and iOS devices.

With AI-altered media becoming increasingly photorealistic, explicit labels could ensure you know exactly what you are viewing, reducing the spread of deepfakes and false content.

It's also becoming a legal requirement in many countries. For instance, the European Union has implemented the EU AI Act demanding that AI-generated media is clearly disclosed, and WhatsApp's new label gives admins a straightforward way to stay on the right side of those rules.

It appears that once an admin shares an update containing AI-generated media, they can tap and hold the message to pull up the context menu. From there, a fresh option called "Add AI content label" will appear.

WABetaInfo says hitting that option attaches a visible tag directly to the message bubble, making it immediately obvious to followers that the content was made using AI rather than captured with a camera.

One thing worth noting — once the label is applied, it looks like admins won't be able to take it off again. So it's well worth double-checking before posting, because there's no going back.

The feature follows a similar move last month, when WhatsApp began rolling out a paid partnership label on both Android and iOS, giving admins a way to mark sponsored posts for their audiences.

Importantly, the label isn't limited to images made with Meta's own AI tools. Whether an admin has created something using ChatGPT, Gemini, or any other generator, the same tag applies.

Not everything needs labelling, though. Plain text messages appear to be exempt, even if they were drafted using WhatsApp's Writing Help feature. The label is designed specifically for media files.

For now, the feature is still being built and hasn't been switched on for early testers just yet. WhatsApp hasn't given any indication of when it might land for a wider rollout either.