Google DeepMind
Watermarking
https://deepmind.google/science/synthid/
Google's public account of what it watermarks and where. The commitment itself, not a policy about it.
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# Google DeepMind — watermarking
# source: https://deepmind.google/science/synthid/
# archived by saidwhen.org — git history is the record; see `git log -p` on this file
# ---
A tool to watermark and identify content generated through AI
Try in Gemini
- Overview
- How it works
- Hands-on
What is SynthID?
Generative AI can help us all to be more creative, productive, and innovative. But it can be hard to tell the difference between content that’s been AI-generated, and content created without AI.
SynthID is our new watermarking tool, designed specifically for AI-generated content. It empowers users to identify AI-generated (or altered) content, helping to foster transparency and trust in generative AI.
How SynthID works
SynthID embeds digital watermarks directly into AI-generated images, audio, text or video. The watermarks are embedded across Google’s generative AI consumer products, and are imperceptible to humans – but can be detected by SynthID's technology.
Slide 1 of 3
AI-generated image and video
SynthID adds an invisible digital watermark to an AI-generated image (or video segment). The watermark doesn’t change the image or video quality. It’s added the moment content is created, and designed to stand up to modifications like cropping, adding filters, changing frame rates, or lossy compression.
AI-generated audio
SynthID embeds a watermark into any audio generated or published through our AI music generation model Lyria or the podcast generation feature of Notebook LM. It’s inaudible to the human ear, and can’t be altered by common modifications like adding noise, MP3 compression, or changing the speed of the track.
AI generated-text
We’ve expanded SynthID to watermarking and identifying text generated by the Gemini app and web experience. Large language models generate text one word (token) at a time. Each word is assigned a probability score, based on how likely it is to be generated next. So for a sentence like “My favourite tropical fruits are mango and…”, the word “bananas” would have a higher probability score than the word “airplanes”. SynthID adjusts these probability scores to generate a watermark. It's not noticeable to the human eye, and doesn’t affect the quality of the output.
Detecting SynthID watermarks in Gemini
Want to check if an image, video or audio clip was generated, or edited, by Google AI? Ask Gemini.
Simply upload the image, video or audio clip to your chat, and ask if it’s been created or altered by Google AI. Gemini will check for a SynthID watermark, and let you know if it finds one.
Try in Gemini
How to verify in Gemini
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SynthID Detector
Earlier this year, we launched the SynthID Detector, a verification portal, to verify if a piece of content was watermarked with SynthID. Just upload an image, video or audio file.
We are currently collaborating with journalists and media professionals to test the portal and collect their feedback.
Join the early tester waitlist
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