Apple has added Google's SynthID technology in iOS 27.2 to embed invisible watermarks on images created by Image Playground and some photos edited with Apple Intelligence. The feature does not affect image quality and withstands cropping and filters. iPhones lack a built-in detector, requiring users to check via the SynthID Detector website.
On October 7, Google announced the global availability of SynthID Detector, which can detect whether images, videos, or audio were AI-generated. Previously limited to journalists and researchers, the tool supports content from Google and partners including OpenAI, Nvidia, and Kakao, with Apple to join later. It now handles one million verification requests per day.
Japanese optics company Nikon said it is 'carefully re-reviewing' the contest submission by Ning Xu, an optical engineer at the National University of Singapore, after commenters accused his winning video in the 16th Small World in Motion microscopy competition of using AI-generated content, citing abnormal biological structures and a Google DeepMind SynthID watermark.
Google has introduced SynthID Bio, which embeds digital watermarks into biological codes and enables verification in digital models and on synthetic proteins without compromising biological function. In wet-lab tests on three target proteins — VEGF-A, SARS-CoV-2 spike protein RBD, and PD-L1 — watermarked designs performed on par with unwatermarked versions, yielding the first watermarked protein binders with biological function. The technology also fine-tunes the AlphaFold 3 diffusion network and has been integrated into the genomic model Evo 2 to watermark phage genomes.