Google has made its SynthID Detector available to the general public worldwide. Anyone can now check whether an image, video or audio file was made with AI tools from Google or its partners.
What has changed?
Google said the tool is available globally in English starting today, in a blog post by Pushmeet Kohli, VP, Science and Strategic Initiatives at Google DeepMind. An early version was introduced last year to help media professionals verify AI-generated content. Google says the expansion is meant to give people more context about what they see online.
Which AI tools it covers
The detector can identify content made with AI from Google, OpenAI, NVIDIA and Kakao, with Apple to be added soon.
How SynthID works
Google launched SynthID in 2023, using imperceptible watermarks across images, video and audio. It says it has watermarked over 180 billion images and videos, along with 240,000 years of audio.
What it can't tell you
The tool is not a general AI-detection system. Gadgets360 points out that it looks only for the SynthID watermark. Media without one may not be flagged, even if AI generated it. Google's post does not address this limitation.
Checks already built into Google products
The new tool joins verification features already built into Search, the Gemini app and Chrome. Google says these now regularly handle over 1 million requests a day.
