Google SynthID Detector Launched: AI-Powered Content Identification Tool with High Accuracy

During the Google I/O 2025 developer conference, Google announced major updates to its SynthID tool - an AI-powered image watermarking solution. Notably, a feature called SynthID Detector helps quickly and efficiently identify AI content created with Google's AI tools.

Advances in generative AI are helping people create content in entirely new ways—from text to high-quality audio, images, and video. As these capabilities grow and become more widespread, the issues of authenticity, context, and verification become more pressing.

SynthID Detector can detect AI-generated content across multiple modalities, and highlight pieces of content that are likely to be watermarked with SynthID. Google introduced this AI watermarking tool in 2023 and later updated it to support AI-generated text and video. This watermarking technique was added to Magic Editor in Google Photos earlier this year.

SynthID has been used to watermark over 10 billion pieces of content; it supports Gemini, Imagen, Lyria, and Veo models. Google claims that SynthID can preserve content quality and 'acts as a robust watermark that remains detectable even when the content is shared or undergoes multiple transformations.' The watermark remains detectable after edits such as adding filters, changing color, and brightness.

Using SynthID Detector, users can upload content types such as images, music, videos, or text generated by Google's AI engine. The portal will scan for watermarks and display results, highlighting affected sections. For audio content, the tool will point out specific segments containing the SynthID watermark.

SynthID Detector is still in development and rolling out to early beta users. Google says the tool will be available to more users in the future, and encourages interested researchers and media professionals to sign up for the waitlist.

Google's product debuts nearly a month after Adobe released its AI content watermarking tool Content Authenticity in public beta. The search giant is working to build an ecosystem around SynthID, including open-sourcing the code and partnering with NVIDIA to watermark videos created by the company's AI models.

Isabella Humphrey

Update 26 May 2025