May 9 (Reuters) - TikTok said on Thursday it would start

using a technology aimed at helping it label images and video

generated by artificial intelligence and uploaded to the video

sharing service.

TikTok said it would adopt "Content Credentials," a digital

watermark that denotes how images were created and edited. The

Content Credential technology was spearheaded by Adobe

but is open for other companies to use and already has been

adopted by companies such as ChatGPT creator OpenAI.

Researchers have expressed concerned that AI-generated

content could be used as misinformation in an attempt to

interfere with U.S. elections this fall. TikTok was already

among a group of 20 tech companies that earlier this year signed

an accord pledging to fight it.

YouTube, owned by Alphabet's Google, as well as

Meta Platforms ( META ), which owns Instagram and Facebook, have

also said they plan to use Content Credentials.

For the system to work, both the maker of the generative AI

tool used to make content and the platform used to distribute

the contents must both agree to use the industry standard.

If a person uses OpenAI's Dall-E tool to generate an image,

for example, OpenAI attaches a watermark to the resulting image.

If that marked image is then uploaded to TikTok, it will be

automatically labeled as AI-generated.

TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance, has 170 million

users in the United States, which recently passed a law

requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok or face a ban. TikTok and

ByteDance have sued to block the law, arguing it violates the

First Amendment.

TikTok already labels AI-generated content made with tools

inside the app but the latest move would apply a label to

content generated outside of the service.

"We also have policies that prohibit realistic AI that is

not labeled, so if realistic AI (generated contents) appears on

the platform, then we will remove it as violating our community

guidelines," Adam Presser, head of operations and trust and

safety at TikTok, said in an interview.