Have you ever looked at a picture and wondered whether it’s real or just another AI creation? Maybe a friend sent you a suspiciously perfect selfie or a bizarre landscape that looks “almost” real. You try the usual tricks — zooming in to spot strange textures, mismatched shadows, or oddly shaped fingers — but modern AI tools are getting so good that these clues don’t always show up.
Google knows this confusion is becoming a daily problem. So instead of making you rely on third-party detectors, the company is building an image-verification tool directly into its Gemini app.
The update arrives just as Google introduced its new Gemini 3-powered Nano Banana Pro model. Alongside it, the company announced that AI image checking is now integrated into Gemini. This feature relies on SynthID — Google’s own digital watermarking technology. SynthID embeds invisible signals inside images generated or edited by Google’s AI tools. You can’t see these watermarks, but Gemini can.
There is one important catch: Gemini can currently detect only images created or altered using Google’s own AI systems. If the image was made using another company’s model, Gemini won’t be able to tell.
Still, the system covers a massive chunk of online content. Since Google introduced SynthID in 2023, more than 20 billion AI-generated images have been watermarked. Now, every one of those can be identified directly through the Gemini app.
Using it is simple:
If you come across an image — online or via chat — and you’re unsure whether it’s real, just upload it to the Gemini app and ask: “Was this created by Google AI?” or “Is this AI-generated?”
Gemini will scan the image for a SynthID watermark and combine that with its own reasoning to give you a clear answer about its origin. Google says this helps users get more context about what they’re seeing online, especially as AI-generated visuals become harder to distinguish.
While it can’t detect content made by non-Google tools, the feature still adds a much-needed layer of transparency. And the best part? It’s available to try out right now.
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