President Joe Biden Issues Executive Order That May Watermark All AI-Generated Memes And Other Images

President Joe Biden issued an Executive Order earlier today that takes some of the first steps in officially regulating the burgeoning artificial intelligence space in the United States in a historic new move.

The Executive Order, which spans several dimensions of AI policy and addresses many significant questions, gives instructions to federal agencies on how to regulate AI and orders them to research and study various aspects of the increasingly prevalent technology.

The Biden Administration and other Democrats say they hope to see legislation pass Congress about artificial intelligence. An executive order is more limited in scope than a law.

The White House put out a fact sheet about the Executive Order, detailing exactly what it says.

First, the administration has put in place new requirements for AI companies to share data about product safety with the government and set standards for what makes an AI safe or not. A specific provision orders that AI not be allowed to "engineer dangerous biological materials."

As word of the news spread throughout the day, some posters were very happy to hear about the new measures by the administration, sharing their reactions on social media.

The order also talks about research priorities. The administration promises to take steps to attract top talent in AI research to the U.S., ensure that "privacy-preserving techniques" for citizens are researched along with artificial intelligence and work with the Justice Department on making sure AI does not advance algorithmic discrimination or get used in unfair ways by local or federal law enforcement. Biden also inaugurated a new website, AI.gov.

Perhaps most interestingly for meme-makers who use many of these tools such as DALL-E or Bing Image Creator, the executive order instructs the Commerce Department to "develop guidance for content authentication and watermarking to clearly label AI-generated content" in order to help prevent scams and misinformation.

It does not, however, mandate that every piece of AI content be watermarked.