Generative AI mass adoption brought many possibilities and facilities for content creation. However, it also entailed additional efforts on the part of AI companies. They must ensure that their technologies are being used responsibly. Google’s SynthID “AI watermark” was born as a response to this, and now the firm is bringing it to its Photos app.
SynthID is a system that integrates specific metadata into fully AI-generated images. This allows such images to be identified as “AI-generated” by compatible services to prevent misuse. For example, Google Search’s results tell you if an image is AI-generated in the “About this image” tab.
Google Photos’ Reimagine feature gets support by SynthID AI watermark
Google Photos has received a plethora of AI-powered features for some time now. “Reimagine,” available as part of the “Magic Editor” suite, is one of the most powerful Gen AI features in Photos, as it allows you to completely transform existing images. Well, now Google is integrating SynthID with Reimagine in Magic Editor. This means that images deeply edited by Reimagine will have metadata that identifies them as such.
The change will be implemented starting this week on the server side. It’s noteworthy that SynthID was already present in another Gen AI-based product from Google: the text-to-image model “Imagen.” The latter is the model that generates pictures through the Gemini assistant, for example.
Google notes that when you make very small edits, SynthID may not flag the image. For instance, this could occur when you alter the color of a small element in the picture, such as a flower. The system is designed to identify AI-powered heavy edits as such. The tool can be a great help in avoiding potential scams in multiple areas. After all, AI-generated images can be incredibly realistic today.
You won’t have to do anything to label the images as “AI-generated,” as the process will happen automatically. You can’t disable the option either, though.
