Google Launches Free Tool for Checking AI-Generated Videos

Google has made its new online service, called SynthID Detector, available to the public for free. The tool analyzes image, video and audio files, looking for the hidden SynthID marker that helps identify content created or edited by artificial intelligence.

SynthID is a special digital “watermark” invisible to the human eye. It is added to image, video and audio files created with compatible artificial intelligence tools. When a user uploads a file to SynthID Detector, the service checks whether the marker is present and reports the result.

The technology was initially used in Google’s Gemini, Imagen, Lyria and Veo services. Other companies later began adding support for SynthID as well. The detector can currently recognize compatible content created by Google, OpenAI, NVIDIA and Kakao. Google has announced that compatibility with Apple technologies will also be added in the future.

According to Google, since SynthID was launched in 2023, its digital markers have been added to more than 180 billion images and videos, as well as audio files with a total duration of approximately 240,000 years. SynthID checks within Google Search, Gemini and Chrome currently process more than 1 million queries per day.

However, there is an important point: SynthID Detector is not a universal AI detector. The service specifically searches only for the SynthID marker. Therefore, the absence of such a marker in a file does not mean that the material was not created using artificial intelligence. Some AI tools may use their own marking systems, while others may not add such a marker at all.

Conversely, detecting SynthID does not mean that the file was created entirely by artificial intelligence. This result simply indicates that an artificial intelligence tool compatible with SynthID was used when the material was created or edited. To try the English-language version of SynthID Detector for free, users can visit the service’s official website.