Google is making it a little easier to spot images that have been edited or generated using artificial intelligence.
The company is using its SynthID technology to add watermarks to its Reimagine tool within Magic Editor.
Reimagine was revealed alongside the Pixel 9 and is text-to-image generative AI tool, enabling users to circle a section of the image and use a written prompt to add new elements and make changes to existing elements.
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Essentially it’ll enable users to describe what you want to see by saying something like “Reimagine as dramatic sunset/volcano/rocks” and craft a new image from the original
SynthID is part of Google Deep Mind and is described as “a technology that embeds an imperceptible, digital watermark directly into AI-generated images, audio, text or video.”
Google already places these watermarks on images that have been completely created with artificial intelligence.
The company points out that these watermarks will be imperceptible by human eye, but as usually detectable by AI detection tools. However, in images where edits are too small for Synth ID to notice, more clarity available within the metadata for the image.
“In some cases, edits made using Reimagine may be too small for SynthID to label and detect — like if you change the color of a small flower in the background of an image,” Google says.
“To learn more, you can use “About this image,” which shows if a SynthID watermark is present as well as an image’s metadata.”
A step in the right direction
Google says this move is part of improving the transparency around AI edits and with tools like Reimagine getting better and better and less detectable, and this is a welcome addition.
We have already passed the point in many cases where AI-based changes are perceptible to the human eye.
It’s important, in this era especially, when reality and truth are already being challenged, for us to be able to trust that an image is genuine.
