News
Google Opens SynthID Detector Worldwide: Anyone Can Now Check AI Content Watermarks
Google announced the global release of SynthID Detector. Anyone can upload an image, video, or audio file to check whether it carries an AI watermark from Google or its partners. About 10 checks per day per user.
On October 7, Google announced it is opening SynthID Detector to the world. Anyone can now upload images, videos, or audio at synthid.com to check whether they carry an AI watermark.
SynthID is the invisible watermarking technology Google DeepMind launched in 2023. It embeds signals invisible to the eye and inaudible to the ear into AI-generated media, without affecting image or audio quality. When the detector finds the signal, it confirms the file’s origin.
What It Can Check
The detector checks for watermarks — not “does this look AI-made.” Google has been explicit: it is not a general-purpose AI detector.
Checkable content includes media generated by Google’s own models and tools — Nano Banana, Veo, Lyria, plus Gemini, Flow, Vids and other generative tools. Partners are supported too: content from OpenAI, NVIDIA, and Kakao can be checked. Apple is coming, but Google gave no timeline.
File format coverage is broad. Images: JPG, PNG, GIF, HEIC, WebP and more; video: MP4, MOV, WebM; audio: MP3, WAV, FLAC and more.
No watermark found doesn’t mean it wasn’t AI-made. Content from tools that don’t support SynthID, or watermarks that were scrubbed or weakened, won’t register. Microsoft and Meta each use their own standards, which SynthID won’t detect either.
Scale and Usage
Google’s numbers: since 2023, over 180 billion images and videos and 240,000 years’ worth of audio have been watermarked with SynthID.
Verification was already embedded across Google’s own products. The Gemini App, Chrome, and Google Search all have watermark checking built in. Google says those entry points handle over a million requests a day. This release is a standalone portal, open to everyone directly.
Before this, SynthID Detector had been in limited testing since last year with journalists and researchers. Now global users get access — though the interface is English-only for now.
It’s free to use and requires an account login — Google, OpenAI, or Apple accounts all work. Per Ars Technica, each person gets about 10 checks per day. A Google engineer said the cap exists to stop anyone from reverse-engineering watermark removal through repeated probing.
Practical Use
Got a suspicious image, video, or audio clip? Upload it to synthid.com instead of trusting your eyes alone. But remember its limits: a watermark found means the origin is largely confirmed; no watermark found doesn’t mean the content is real.