Google opens SynthID Detector to everyone

Google has opened SynthID Detector to everyone globally in English, turning a tool that was previously aimed at media professionals into a public verification portal.

The detector lets users upload an image, video or audio file and check whether it contains a supported SynthID watermark. Google says the tool can identify content made by its own AI systems and by partners including OpenAI, NVIDIA and Kakao, with Apple support planned.

This matters because AI media is becoming harder to judge by sight alone. Google says SynthID has already been applied to more than 180 billion images and videos, plus 240,000 years of audio. The new public portal gives ordinary users, journalists and platforms another way to inspect media provenance, though it is still limited to supported watermarking systems and should not be treated as universal proof that something is or is not AI-generated.

Google also says its built-in verification features across Search, Gemini and Chrome now handle more than 1 million checks per day.