On Tuesday, Google launched a new website that allows anyone to verify whether an image, video or audio clip was generated by artificial intelligence. The company had previously provided the tool to selected journalists, media professionals and researchers for testing at Google I/O last year and is now opening access to the public.
Supported file formats
The site accepts a wide range of file types:
- Images: JPG, JPEG, PNG, BMP, WEBP, AVIF, HEIC, HEIF, TIFF, TIF, GIF
- Videos: MP4, MOV, WEBM
- Audio: WAV, MP3, OGG, FLAC, AAC, M4A
Under the hood: SynthID
Google uses SynthID, introduced in 2023, to detect AI-generated media. Google’s own models — Nano Banana, Veo and Lyria — and generation-capable tools such as Gemini, Flow, ProducerAI and Vids apply SynthID watermarking to the media they produce.
Other companies including OpenAI, NVIDIA and Kakao also support SynthID. OpenAI maintains its own site for checking content, and reports indicate that Apple plans to add support soon as well.
Integrations and usage
Google has integrated SynthID verification into the Gemini app and Google Chrome. The company says people currently make about 1 million verification requests per day through these mechanisms and related interfaces.
Reliability and limits
Several major tech companies, including Microsoft and Meta, operate their own watermarking and verification standards. These tools, however, are not infallible and can fail to identify content created by their own models.
Making the SynthID verification site public expands the options for checking media authenticity, but the limitations of watermarking and detection mean verification should be used alongside other checks and context when assessing the provenance of a piece of media.
