Google has launched a new website that allows members of the public to check whether an image, video or audio clip was generated using artificial intelligence.

The company announced the tool on Oct 6, expanding access after initially making it available to selected journalists, media professionals and researchers for testing at Google I/O last year.

The platform supports a wide range of file formats, including JPG, JPEG, PNG, BMP, WEBP, AVIF, HEIC, HEIF, TIFF, TIF and GIF for images, as well as MP4, MOV and WEBM for videos.

The verification system is powered by SynthID, a technology Google introduced in 2023 to identify content created or modified using artificial intelligence.

Google said its Nano Banana, Veo and Lyria models, as well as AI enabled products such as Gemini, Flow, ProducerAI and Vids, use SynthID to watermark media they generate.

The watermark is designed to help determine whether digital content originated from an AI system.

SynthID is also supported by companies including OpenAI, Nvidia and Kakao, while Apple is reportedly preparing to adopt the technology.
Google has integrated SynthID verification into the Gemini application and Google Chrome.

The company said users currently make about one million requests each day to verify whether content was generated by AI.

Other major technology companies are also developing systems to identify and watermark AI generated material.

Microsoft and Meta have introduced their own standards for content verification. However, these technologies are not completely reliable and may sometimes fail to identify AI generated content, including material produced by the companies that developed the verification systems.

The launch comes as concerns continue to grow over the spread of AI generated images, videos and audio across the internet.

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly capable of producing realistic content, tools such as SynthID could provide users with an additional way to determine the origin of digital media. Google hopes wider public access will make it easier for people to assess the authenticity of content they encounter online.

Source: TechCrunch