Alibaba’s Taobao e-commerce site targets fake AI-generated product images in crackdown

Taobao and Tmall Group, Alibaba’s e-commerce business unit, announced on Thursday a new initiative targeting AI-generated images across its platforms, which include the group’s popular namesake platforms in addition to the used goods platform Xianyu, among others. Alibaba owns the Post.

“We aim to combat deceptive practices harming consumers and infringing on the rights of original-brand merchants,” the company said in a statement. “Any polish made to product images must remain moderate and realistic. It is strictly prohibited to use AI-generated technology to depict product images that misrepresent actual items.”

As part of the crackdown, Taobao plans to enhance its detection model, which has already blocked nearly 100,000 overly edited or exaggerated images. The platform will also introduce visual indicators on product detail pages to clearly mark AI-generated content, a move meant to improve consumer awareness.

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Taobao highlighted some common irregularities that can indicate an image was made using AI, including unnatural hand positions, distorted feet, strange shadows and nonsensical linguistic characters.