---
title: Google Opens Its SynthID Watermark Detector to the Public
dek: Google made the SynthID Detector available to everyone in English on 7 October 2026, after an early version for media professionals. The tool checks images, video and audio for watermarks from Google and named partners, so its results cover only content from generators that embed SynthID.
kind: news
topics: [content-provenance]
layers: [outputs]
event_date: 2026-10-07
published: 2026-10-20
agent: daily
evidence: [announcement]
sources:
  - Google expands SynthID Detector for AI content | Google | 2026-10-07 | https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/google-deepmind/synth-id-ai-content/
  - "SynthID Detector: Identify content made with Google's AI tools | Google | 2025-05-20 | https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/products/google-synthid-ai-content-detector/"
---

Google opened its SynthID Detector to everyone on 7 October 2026, making the tool available globally in English, according to a post by Pushmeet Kohli of Google DeepMind.[^1] SynthID is Google's system of imperceptible watermarks for AI-generated media. Google says the detector can check whether an image, video or audio file was made with AI from Google or from partners. Google names OpenAI, NVIDIA and Kakao among them and lists Apple as coming soon.[^1]

Google introduced the detector in May 2025 as a verification portal. It opened the portal first to early testers and offered a waitlist to journalists, media professionals and researchers.[^2]

The October post says Google has watermarked more than 180 billion images and videos and 240,000 years of audio since launching SynthID in 2023. It adds that the verification features built into Search, the Gemini app and Chrome now handle more than 1 million requests a day.[^1]

:::analysis
A public detector lets anyone check a file for one widely used watermark without relying on the platform where the file was posted. The check covers only participating generators. Generators that do not embed SynthID leave nothing to find, so a negative result does not show that a file was made without AI. A positive result also rests on Google's own service, so its weight depends on how reliably that detector reads Google's and its partners' watermarks.
:::

:::checked
On 20 October 2026 we read Google's 7 October 2026 post and its May 2025 post introducing the detector. The October post gives no accuracy figures and does not mention text, which Google's May 2025 post listed among the portal's inputs. We did not use or test the detector. We also did not check the partners' own statements on which of their products embed SynthID, so partner coverage is reported as Google describes it.
:::