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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Gemini can now tell if a video was made with Google AI.
- The tool can only detect Google AI, not other companies.
- Verification is available in all languages supported by Gemini.
It’s getting harder and harder to tell if a video is real or AI, but a new tool from Google could make it a little easier to decide.
Google has announced an expansion of its content transparency tools that includes the ability for Gemini to identify whether a video was created or edited with Google AI tools. It introduced a similar capability for images just a few weeks ago.
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The only catch is that the tool only identifies Google videos, not ones that might have been created with other tools. Still, it’s a useful tool to help stay aware of what you’re watching.
To test a video, upload it to Gemini and ask, “Was this generated using Google AI?” Gemini will search both the audio and video for an invisible SynthID watermark that’s present in everything Google AI creates. Gemini will give a response like, “No SynthID detected” or “SynthID detected within the video between 5-20 seconds and audio between 10-20 seconds.”
You can upload videos up to 100 MB and 90 seconds long.
Does Gemini’s AI detection work?
To test the feature, I created videos with three different AI image generators — Gemini, Bing, and Adobe Firefly (Gemini followed the prompt the best if you’re curious). I saved the videos to my phone, emailed them to another address, and then downloaded them onto another device and uploaded all three to Gemini.
Gemini correctly flagged the one it had produced as having a SynthID in both the audio and video. For the second and third videos, Gemini correctly said they weren’t made with Google tools as they didn’t contain a Google watermark, but it wasn’t possible to determine if they were made with other AI tools.
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I asked Gemini if it could still guess based on what it knew about common problems with AI-generated videos. A few seconds later, it returned seven accurate reasons why that video was likely generated with AI. So even if a video wasn’t created with Gemini, let that be a reminder that Gemini can still be useful in deciding if it’s real or not.
Google said that image and video verification are now available in all languages and countries supported by the Gemini app.
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