Google might be exploring a new idea to eliminate the guesswork about whether a page’s content is human-written or AI-generated.
A new Chrome Platform Status page discusses the “AI content disclosure attribute,” which allows authors to declare the degree of AI involvement for any HTML element.
The idea behind the feature is to enable elemental AI disclosure, so that browsers like Chrome could show exactly which parts were human-written, AI-assisted, AI-generated, or autonomously generated.
How elemental AI-disclosure could work
The proposal, detailed in this GitHub post, aims to introduce an “ai-disclosure” HTML attribute and a tag that marks specific portions of a page with labels indicating AI involvement.
As and when the feature comes into place, it will allow browsers to recognize when a piece of content is AI-generated and flag it (visually) for the users.
Given the rise in the usage of generative AI tools for webpage content and how advanced those tools are, it’s often impossible to tell what’s written by a human and what’s not.
Will this become a Chrome standard?
If adopted by Chrome (and later by other browsers), the new “AI content disclosure attribute” could introduce a layer of honesty and transparency to the web.
Although the feature wouldn’t include native AI content detection, implying that it would still rely on the author’s integrity, it should allow users to distinguish between expert-written and AI-generated text.
Right now, the feature has been filed with ChromeStatus. While Google has shown interest, it could take some time before Chrome adopts it.
If the feature performs well in Google’s browser, it could also be adopted by Firefox or Safari, since AI-generated content masquerading as human content is a universal problem.
