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Published Oct 13, 2026, 2:44 PM EDT
Sara Heritage is a tech and gaming journalist, who's currently making her way up to Master Ball rank in Pokemon Champions. Bylines in IGN, GAMINGbible, The Gamer and more. You can usually find her tinkering with tech, or restoring old consoles, always with one of her 3 cats nearby. Come and talk with her over on Twitter @SHeritageJourno.
Summary
Since Google DeepMind first launched SynthID in 2023, the technology has gradually embedded invisible watermarks in AI-generated images, audio, and video files. Up to now, inspecting these files has generally necessitated the use of specialized tools which are only available to media professionals and journalists.
Now, Google is making a lot easier to identify media that has been produced by AI by opening its SynthID detection tool to everyone in a massive effort to combat misinformation.
How to use SynthID in browser
This is a great step towards targeting misinformation, if people can be bothered to check
Google has launched the SynthID Detector in English worldwide, joining the built-in verification features in Search, the Gemini app, and Chrome.
But now you can upload a file to the tool to immediately find out whether it was produced by artificial intelligence. Yes, that's right. That funny but impossible cat meme you saw on social media was made by AI, I hate to be the one to break it to you.
To do this, simply visit the SynthID Detector website, where you can upload an image, audio, or video file directly through your browser.
According to Google, it has already watermarked more than 180 billion images and videos, along with a massive amount of audio content amounting to 240,000 years.
This rollout is particularly useful because it’s not just images created with Google Gemini — while the watermarks originated with Google, the detection system now covers content generated by a massive lineup of major AI creators, including OpenAI, NVIDIA, Kakao, and soon, Apple as well.
However, Meta has its own watermarking system called Content Seal and is testing a totally different AI identification system which isn't compatible with Google, and vice versa. This tool only detects Meta’s AI signatures.
Still, this is a massive win against deepfakes and misinformation. Instead of guessing whether a bizarre photo, a suspicious video clip, or a hyperrealistic voice recording is real, you finally have a reliable way to get straight answers.
Remember, though, that the SynthID Detector works best when content has been watermarked with SynthID technology; some AI-generated images, audio, or videos that haven't been watermarked may not be picked up by the tool. Although it is a powerful safety measure it doesn't guarantee that all AI-generated media will be detected.
If you want an even easier way to check if something you see is AI, I use a free Chrome extension called Hive AI Detector that uses advanced machine learning models to identify various types of AI-generated content, including images.
