Google opens SynthID Detector to public

Google announced the worldwide public rollout of SynthID Detector on October 7, 2026, with access available through synthid.com in English. Users must sign in with a Google, Apple, or OpenAI account to upload files and check for SynthID, Google’s invisible watermarking technology launched in 2023 for AI-generated content.

The detector supports images, videos, and audio files, but not text in the current public release. When a watermark is found, the tool indicates that the media was created or modified with AI and warns that it may have been edited later. Video analysis is presented on a timeline with separate video and audio tracks. Google says the watermark is resistant to common transformations, while recommending the highest-quality file possible for better reliability.

More than 180 billion images and videos have been watermarked by SynthID since 2023, along with the equivalent of 240,000 years of audio content. The tool is limited to media from providers that use the technology, including Google, OpenAI, NVIDIA, and Kakao, with Apple expected to follow. Google stresses that it is not a general-purpose AI detector, so an absent watermark does not prove content is authentic.