Google Lets Users Remove Visible Watermarks from AI-Generated Images, Videos, and Music

Google will now allow users to remove visible watermark from its AI generations

Google announced on Friday that it will now allow users to remove a visible watermark from its AI generations, including images, videos, and songs. The company specified that this won't affect the invisible SynthID watermark and C2PA standard-related metadata. Josh Woodward, the company's VP for Gemini, said in a post on X that this toggle will be available for Nano Banana, Omni, and Lyria models. He specified that the setting to turn the visible watermark off will be available in Gemini and Google's video editor, Flow, with support for Search coming soon. The change reflects an evolving approach to labeling AI-generated media, as visible watermarks can often make content less useful for professional and creative work, but the need to identify AI-generated content remains. "We're striking a balance here between creative control and safety: while the visible watermarks are now optional, invisible SynthID watermarks and C2PA metadata are still being used for transparency. So you can still use Gemini or Search to see if an image was AI-generated," he wrote. The feature is rolling out in the coming days, and once available, users will be able to go to Settings > Media Watermark to turn the visible mark on or off. Google is also open-sourcing a new library called Credentio to let developers embed a local validation mechanism in their apps. This comes after Anthropic's hotly debated move to include a watermark in text and files generated by Claude to comply with EU regulations.

You can now turn off Google Gemini's visible watermarks

Google will now allow you to remove visible watermarks from the images, videos, and music made with AI tools. With the update, you can toggle off a new "Media watermark" setting in Gemini and Google's AI video generator, Flow. When toggled off, Google will remove the "sparkle" watermark that appears in the bottom-right corner of content generated with the company's Nano Banana and Omni models. Though visible watermarks are now optional, AI-generated content will have invisible SynthID watermarks and C2PA metadata embedded in the background, according to Josh Woodward, the vice president of Google Labs, Gemini, and AI Studio. That means you can still verify if an image has one of these markers by asking Gemini or Search if it's AI-generated. While this change might make it more difficult to quickly discern if an image or video is AI-generated, many users have already been editing out visible watermarks. Other AI image generators, like OpenAI and Meta's, also don't apply visible watermarks. Instead, OpenAI relies on SynthID and C2PA to signal whether something is AI-generated, while Meta launched its own Content Seal standard. Anthropic also announced this week that it's applying invisible watermarks to both AI-generated text and images. Google plans on rolling out its new watermark setting to Search as well, but the toggle won't launch in countries that require visible watermarks.

Google will now allow users to remove visible watermarks from AI content - Engadget

Google VP Josh Woodward just announced that users will be able to remove visible watermarks from AI-generated images and videos. A toggle will soon be available for the Nano Banana, Omni and Lyria models, which all use the familiar sparkle icon to denote AI. It's also coming to Gemini and the video editor Flow in the future. This kind of defeats the whole point of visible watermarks, as they exist to give people a fast way to spot AI-generated content out in the wild. However, users will still have slightly harder methods to identify this type of thing. This move will not impact the invisible SynthID watermark and C2PA metadata, as there are are no toggles to shut those off. However, both of these require a user to take action like asking a chatbot or uploading to a portal to get to the bottom of things. Woodward says the watermark toggle is rolling out just about everywhere, "except in countries where it's required by law to keep them." This includes the EU, which recently announced new rules on AI transparency that mandate visible watermarks on any "authentic-looking" deepfake content. South Korea made a similar move earlier this year. Google's change reflects the industry's ever-evolving approach to labeling AI-generated content. Visible watermarks are a great tool to help regular people quickly identify deepfakes, which in turn can help us live in a shared reality. However, they can be a hindrance to those who use AI tools for creative work. "We're striking a balance here between creative control and safety," Woodward added. This is just the latest watermark news impacting the world of AI. Suno just announced new "transparency tools" that include some kind of labeling system that shows if a song has been AI-generated when it appears on another platform. Anthropic also just made a fairly major move, announcing it was adding invisible C2PA-based watermarks on text and files generated by Claude. This is to comply with the aforementioned EU regulations.

Google now lets you remove the watermark from Gemini's creations

This setting will allow you remove visible watermarks from images, videos, and music creations. When creating content with Gemini, you could always count on a visible watermark being stamped on your creation. However, Android Authority recently spotted evidence suggesting that this would change in the future. Sure enough, Google has updated Gemini with this new option. Google has rolled out a new setting in Gemini called Media Watermark. You'll be able to find the option by opening to Settings, located in the left bar. It will appear near the bottom of the menu, as the third to last option. If you hover over Media Watermark, there will be two options: On and Off. When left on, any creation you generate will still have a visible watermark. While selecting off removes the watermark. This applies to images, videos, and music made with Gemini. Although the visible watermark will be removed if you turn Media Watermark off, that doesn't mean all watermarks will be gone. Google confirms that invisible SynthID watermarks and C2PA metadata will stay embeded in your creations. This change comes after Josh Woodward, Google's VP leading Gemini, AI Studio, and Google Labs, asked users about their biggest complaints with Gemini. One of the top 10 most popular requests was to remove the visible watermark.

Google Opens the Gates of AI Slop Hell

Google Gemini has a new feature: Letting users generate AI slop without visible watermarks to identify it. The official Twitter account for the LLM announced on Friday (news dump, everyone!) that users will soon gain the ability to "decide if your image, video, and music creations made with Gemini will have visible watermarks." Now it's a toggle. A few months ago, per Android Authority, Google VP Josh Woodward polled Gemini users on their most-requested features and found removing the visible watermarks on images generated by Google's Nano Banana, Gemini's image-generation model, was in the top 10. It's hardly a shocker that many AI image generation enthusiasts' top priority is removing visible evidence of AI usage. So what, if any, safeguards against generative AI abuse remain in Gemini? Google points to two technologies: C2PA (content credential) metadata and SynthID, an invisible watermark that encodes itself into images, video, and audio. It's not like it takes much effort to remove a visible watermark from an image. Just crop or obfuscate it. C2PA, being metadata, is similarly trivial to remove. What's more, most social media services strip some or all metadata from uploaded content anyways, meaning that anyone looking to spread disinformation doesn't necessarily even have to take additional steps. SynthID is more robust. It works by encoding itself into the pixels of an image, and is designed to be resilient enough that it registers even after an image has been cropped, resized, and reduced in quality until it looks like a 1990s AOL Mail attachment. Ars Technica tested it, finding that while SynthID becomes less detectable with iterations, the image is "uselessly blurry by the time that happens." Still, Ars noted that SynthID (by Gemini's own not designed to withstand adversarial attacks. At least two commercial services, Rephrasy and SynthID Bypass, already claim to beat the technology. There's also open-source tools and how-to guides. One author of one Medium post on the subject admitted it took "weeks, 123k image pairs, 200 plain Gemini images and a very specific understanding of spread-spectrum encoding" just to make changes to images that sometimes fooled decoders into missing confidence thresholds. Any way you slice it, this decision is another little landmark on the road towards total erosion of everyone's ability to recognize AI-generated images at face value. That's probably good for people profiting from AI slop, and bad for everyone else. Woodward tweeted on Friday that the watermark-removal feature will soon be rolled out "except in countries where it's required by law to keep them." Ah. Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on this story, but we'll update if we hear back.

Google now lets you nix visible Gemini image watermarks

Of course, "visible" is the key word here, with Google exec Josh Woodward explaining in a social post that invisible SynthID watermarks and metadata will remain embedded in created Gemini images. "We're striking a balance here between creative control and safety," Woodard wrote on X, adding that the option to drop the visible watermark is available for the Nano Banana image model, the Omni model for videos, and Lyria for generated music. You can find the option in your Gemini settings; just click Media watermark, then select either On or Off. I tried it myself (above), and as promised, the resulting Gemini image landed without a Gemini logo watermark. Previously, all Gemini-generated images and videos came with a telltale Gemini icon in the bottom-right corner, which served as a visual cue that the content was generated by AI. The ability to remove visible watermarks from Gemini-created images popped up in a top-10 list of requested Gemini features last month. The new Gemini watermark toggle won't appear in countries where visible AI watermarks are required, Woodard wrote. It's worth noting that ChatGPT's image creator doesn't stamp visual watermarks on generated images or videos at all, although it does embed such content with invisible watermarks. The Claude desktop app doesn't offer a native image generator. The timing of Google's announcement about its visual watermark toggle is a little awkward, given the hubbub this week over Anthropic's news that Claude models will soon embed all generated text with invisible watermarks.

Google's Gemini app adds a toggle to disable AI watermarks, with some exceptions

If you have ever generated an image with Gemini and gotten annoyed by that stamped-on watermark, Google finally heard you. Gemini is rolling out a new setting called Media Watermarks that lets you toggle visible watermarks on or off across everything you create, including images made with Nano Banana, videos made with Omni, and music made with Lyria. Until now, that visible watermark was applied automatically with no way to turn it off. How to turn off AI watermarks for Nano Banana, Omni, and Lyria in Gemini? The steps to turn off AI-generated watermarks are straightforward. Head into Gemini's settings, select Media Watermark, and simply toggle it on or off. Whatever you choose applies to every future image, video, and music track you create going forward. Please note that turning off the visible AI watermark does not mean your content becomes untraceable, though. Google still embeds an invisible SynthID watermark and C2PA metadata into everything you generate, regardless of your visible watermark setting, so the origin of AI-generated content remains identifiable behind the scenes. Recommended Videos One more thing worth knowing is that this rollout is not available everywhere. If you are in India, South Korea, or Vietnam, you will only get this option with a paid AI Ultra subscription; otherwise your content keeps the visible watermark automatically. Work and school accounts do not get this setting at all either, meaning visible watermarks stay mandatory there no matter what. Why did Google add the AI watermark toggle to Gemini? This update did not come out of nowhere. Google VP Josh Woodward asked users for their biggest Gemini frustrations, and thousands responded. Removing Nano Banana's visible watermark landed in the resulting top 10 requests. Woodward said the team would consider it, and now the option has officially arrived, following growing community efforts to strip AI watermarks from generated content altogether.

Google is Hiding Visible Watermarks on AI-Created Media

While there's been a considerable amount of pushback against AI-generated content, certain companies like Google have at least made some effort to help users easily identify AI-made images and video. That all changes today though, according to a major update from Google. More specifically, the company has now confirmed that it will give users an option to hide away AI watermarks on media created using Gemini. As such, this will include AI-made videos, photos and music, although these will still come with SynthID watermarks and C2PA metadata. On one hand however, these are invisible and might not be instantly apparent to most users who don't really bother to do a double-take on the authenticity of online content. READ: Chrome could let Gemini automatically fix your weak passwords According to Google, users can turn off watermarks by heading into Settings > Media watermark within the Gemini app. The option will be made available in the coming days for both the Gemini app and Google Flow apps as well. That in mind, users can easily check if content is AI by asking Gemini directly if said media is in fact, AI. Josh Woodward, VP for Google Gemini comments: We're striking a balance here between creative control and safety: while the visible watermarks are now optional, invisible SynthID watermarks and C2PA metadata are still being used for transparency. So you can still use Gemini or Search to see if an image was AI-generated. There is an exception though, as AI-made content will still display the Gemini AI watermark in regions where the law requires content to display such.