Google has, to date, watermarked more than 180bn images and videos, it said.

Three years after first launching the tool, Google is now making its generative AI detector available to the public globally, as AI-created content becomes increasingly difficult for humans to discern.

Google has, to date, watermarked more than 180bn images and videos, along with 240,000 years’ worth of audio content, it said. That number stood at around 10bn pieces of content in May 2025.

Users can now use the SynthID detector to identify certain types of AI-generated content created by Google or its affiliated partners, including OpenAI and Nvidia. They will be similarly able to check AI content from Apple’s tools soon, the company said.

Users will be able to utilise the tool alongside Google’s other built-in verification features in Search, the Gemini app, and Chrome, it said.

AI watermarking technology is not entirely reliable, researchers, AI companies and lawmakers all agree.

The SynthID system, for example, can only detect if content was generated using SynthID-enabled systems, but does not reveal other vital information, such as creator identity, tool name, edit history or timestamps, leading to challenges discerning human input into content generated using AI.

SynthID was first launched in 2023, and two years later, media professionals were given access to an early version to help detect AI content.

Earlier this week, OpenAI rolled out text watermarking in the EU; in August, Anthropic pledged the same within the bloc from its newer models.

“Text watermarking and detection remain early technologies with significant limitations,” OpenAI said earlier this week.

Shorter passages and AI-generated output edited by humans are more difficult to detect for watermarking, the company clarified. According to its testing, detection rates plummet from close to 100pc when generated texts are unedited to less than 20pc when one-quarter of the words are changed.

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