The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

AI images are getting harder to spot. Google thinks it has a solution.

The tech giant is among companies pushing out AI tools while promising to build more tools to protect against their misuse

By
August 29, 2023 at 8:00 a.m. EDT
A collage with an edited image and a stamp.
(Illustration by Elena Lacey/The Washington Post; iStock)
6 min

Artificial intelligence-generated images are becoming harder to distinguish from real ones as tech companies race to improve their AI products. As the 2024 presidential campaign ramps up, concern is quickly rising that such images might be used to spread false information.

On Tuesday, Google announced a new tool — called SynthID — that it says could be part of the solution. The tool embeds a digital “watermark” directly into the image that can’t be seen by the human eye but can be picked up by a computer that’s been trained to read it. Google said its new watermarking tech is resistant to tampering, making it a key step toward policing the spread of fake images and slowing the dissemination of disinformation.