Google opens SynthID Detector to everyone — a website that checks whether an image, video, or audio file was made with AI from Google or partners including OpenAI, NVIDIA, and Kakao

“Upload a file to Google's SynthID Detector and it tells you whether it carries a SynthID watermark — Google's, OpenAI's, NVIDIA's, or Kakao's.”

Usable claims

• On October 7, 2026 (Wednesday, calendar-verified), Google announced that SynthID Detector, its tool for checking whether content carries a SynthID watermark, is now open to everyone. Per Google's blog post by Pushmeet Kohli (VP, Science and Strategic Initiatives, Google DeepMind): "Since launching Google SynthID in 2023, we've helped people identify AI-generated media using imperceptible watermarks across images, video, and audio." The scale, per the post: "To date, we've watermarked over 180 billion images and videos, along with 240,000 years of audio content." The history, per the post: "Last year, we introduced an early version of the SynthID Detector to help media professionals verify AI-generated content." The expansion, per the post: "Now, we're expanding access to everyone – with the tool available globally in English starting today." — the announcement's 'starting today' anchors to October 7, 2026. The capability, per the post: "With the new SynthID Detector, anyone can easily check if an image, video, or audio file was made with AI from Google or our partners, including OpenAI, NVIDIA, Kakao, and soon, Apple." And the ecosystem, per the post: "This tool joins our built-in verification features in Search, the Gemini app, and Chrome, which now regularly handle over 1 million requests daily." The Detector lives at synthid.com (linked from both Google's post and TechCrunch's article). Per TechCrunch (Ivan Mehta, 7:00 AM PDT): "The company made this tool available to select journalists, media professionals, and researchers for testing at Google I/O last year, and is now opening up access to the tool to everyone." The formats, per TechCrunch: "The site supports JPG, JPEG, PNG, BMP, WEBP, AVIF, HEIC, HEIF, TIFF, TIF, and GIF formats for images; MP4, MOV, and WEBM for videos; and WAV, MP3, OGG, FLAC, AAC, and M4A for audio." The watermarking side, per TechCrunch: "The company's Nano Banana, Veo, and Lyria models, as well as tools with generation capabilities, like Gemini, Flow, ProducerAI, and Vids, all use SynthID to watermark any media they generate." Per TechCrunch: "OpenAI, Nvidia, and Kakao also support SynthID, and OpenAI maintains its own site for checking content. Apple is said to be adding support soon, too." — TechCrunch hedges Apple ('is said to be') where Google's own post reads 'and soon, Apple'. Per TechCrunch: "Google has baked SynthID verification into the Gemini app and Google Chrome. The company said people currently make 1 million requests to verify content every day." And the limitation, per TechCrunch: "Microsoft and Meta have their own standards for watermarking and verifying content. However, these tools are not infallible, often failing to identify content created by their makers' models."