Google’s SynthID Detector is no longer invite-only. The portal is now generally available at synthid.com. Anyone with a Google, Apple, or OpenAI account can upload an image, a video, or an audio file and have it checked for a SynthID watermark. Until now that check sat behind a waitlist aimed at journalists, researchers, and media professionals.
What SynthID Detector tells you
The tool does not just return a yes or no. When it finds a watermark, it highlights which portions of the file carry it. For a long video or a lengthy audio clip, that distinction is the useful part. A partly synthetic file behaves very differently from a fully generated one. A single pass-or-fail verdict would flatten that difference.
Detection currently covers content from Google, OpenAI, NVIDIA, and Kakao models. Google lists Apple support as coming. Read that list carefully before treating the tool as a general AI detector. SynthID reads a watermark that a participating model embedded at generation time. A clean result means no supported watermark was found, which is not proof a human made the file.
You need one of three accounts to use it
Using the portal requires signing in with a Google, Apple, or OpenAI account. There is no plain email sign-in option.
That is a strange gate on a verification tool. The argument for making SynthID Detector public is that ordinary people should be able to check a suspicious file. Someone holding none of those three accounts still cannot. Two of the three also belong to companies whose own models are among those being checked for. A tool built to reduce friction around AI provenance should not require an account with an AI vendor.
How this fits Google’s watermarking push
SynthID Detector was first shown at Google I/O in May 2025, in its waitlist-gated form. Opening it to everyone is the actual change here, rather than any new capability. It also lands in a year when AI content labelling has become a live issue. Google has been adjusting how its own labels work, including making Gemini’s visible watermark optional, while regulators push their own rules through the EU AI Act transparency requirements.
The invisible watermark is doing the heavy lifting in Google’s approach. It only works if the tool that reads it is in everyone’s hands. Dropping the waitlist is the right call. Dropping the login requirement would be the next one.
Sources: Android Authority, Google
