Google rolls out fact-check tool for images globally

San Francisco: To help users find high-quality information about what they see online, Google has rolled out the "About this image" fact-check tool to English language users globally in Search.

According to the tech giant, the tool will give people an easy way to check the credibility and context of images they see online.

With this tool, users will get to discover an image’s history, metadata and the context users used it with on different sites.

"You can access this tool by clicking on the three dots on an image in Google Images results, or by clicking 'more about this page' in the About this result tool on search results," Google said in a blogpost on Wednesday.

An image’s history will allow users to see when an image or similar images may have first been seen by Google Search, and whether it was previously published much earlier on other webpages.

With an image’s metadata, users will be able to see metadata -- when available -- that image creators and publishers have added to an image, including fields that may indicate that it has been generated or enhanced by AI.

Moreover, users can see how an image is used on other pages, and what other sources, like news and fact-checking sites, have to say about it.

This information can be helpful to assess the claims being made about an image and to see evidence and perspectives from other sources, according to Google.

Along with the About this image tool, the tech giant also announced that approved journalists and fact-checkers can upload or copy URLs of images to learn more about them within their own tools with 'FaceCheck Claim Search API'.

In June, the company began testing features using the Fact Check Explorer tool, giving fact-checkers the ability to explore fact-checks, references and other details associated with a particular image.

In addition, the company is experimenting with generative AI to help with the description of sources, for example, a page of an unfamiliar seller or an unknown blog.