EU will mandate labels on authentic-looking AI content starting August 2 • Hacker News Board

Re: EU will mandate labels on authentic-looking AI content starting August 2

#111

Post by PowerElectronix » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #32

PowerElectronix wrote: post #7

Another step to make users dumb and blindly trusting of their regulators. I don't opose labeling AI content, I opose mandating it and giving users the false confidence that something without label is legit.

If I buy a bottle of, say, white spirits, there’s a warning on it that it’s poison and dangerously flammable. Because that’s the law. Now, there’s nothing _really_ stopping an unscrupulous manufacturer from making a bottle without those warnings. But on balance it still feels preferable to force manufacturers to do it.

On that same example, if for whatever reason (evil company, company that isn't up to date with regulations, misprints) you get a bottle of that without any label. Would you blindly trust that yoi can toss it to a fire or mix it in your coffee?

The point I try to make is that consumers should be educated more than being told what to think about a product by looking at a label, especially when companies are way nimbler than regulators and will make aure labels are as useless as they can get.

Re: EU will mandate labels on authentic-looking AI content starting August 2

#112

Post by DarkNova6 » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 11:01 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #83

Meta-commentary on this discussion: okay, I know the ‘hacker news’ thing has always been kinda a misnomer, and has gotten moreso. But it’s still kind of shocking to me how little people here value making something, versus pretending to make something. There’s value to actually doing stuff. The amount of “all artists will use AI to pretend to make stuff, because money” is honestly kinda bizarre, and completely misunde…

Right? It strikes me that the vast majority of people complaining genuinely don't understand the difference between law and code, content and art or can think of anything beyond what they are facing in day to day work realities.

Re: EU will mandate labels on authentic-looking AI content starting August 2

#113

Post by figassis » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 8:37 AM UTC

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #104

figassis wrote: post #60

How do you define "trying to make it look authentic"? You make a deepfake of a politician saying a discriminatory joke, and the author will just say "It was obvious this was not intended to be authentic. Anyone could see it's out of character". But the message already influenced millions.

I often see this kind of comment on hn. I'm not sure if I'm suffering from confirmation bias, but I do think it's possible that a large proportion of people here think that laws should work like code. What happened is the input, some calculation happens, and the judgment is the output. But that's not how laws work. In this case, a judge would set some standards, like "would a reasonable person be confused by this", a…

That would be nice, and what I woudl expect from judges. But from what I experienced and from what I've seen, real nuanced judgement happens rarely. Most often judges simply lean on technicality, they act like machines, and this is why laws are gamed. People companies who violate certain regulations always comply to the letter, but never to the spirit, and yet they often get a pass or a pocket change fine, why do you think that is?

Re: EU will mandate labels on authentic-looking AI content starting August 2

#114

Post by joshspankit » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 1:46 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #83

Meta-commentary on this discussion: okay, I know the ‘hacker news’ thing has always been kinda a misnomer, and has gotten moreso. But it’s still kind of shocking to me how little people here value making something, versus pretending to make something. There’s value to actually doing stuff. The amount of “all artists will use AI to pretend to make stuff, because money” is honestly kinda bizarre, and completely misunde…

I believe we’re all struggling with the downstream effects of the attention economy that’s fed by leveraged debt.

Online, the most money being made is by people who get attention. The making is not just secondary, in many cases it’s a calculation. Even genres that I enjoy as a maker for having real tactile value (repair, restoration, rug cleaning, etc) are inherently not profitable unless they are getting paid out by the video platforms.

For artists this has created a wild set of conflicting constraints. Some can do the Patreon model but for those who don’t, they need attention in order to sell art in order to generate enough money to make art. In this world, AI lowering the barrier to entry means that we’re close to (if not already there) “artists” (aka people farming for money) soaking up all the attention and leaving none for the people who make things.

It’s not that all artists will use AI to pretend to make stuff, it’s that all the pieces are there for a world where these money farmers will be the only visible type of artist.