Google announced on Friday that users can now turn off visible watermarks on AI-generated content, including images, videos, and songs, marking a shift in how the company balances creative freedom with content transparency.
Josh Woodward, Google VP for Gemini, said in a post on X that the toggle will be available for the Nano Banana, Omni, and Lyria models. The setting to disable the visible watermark will appear under Settings then Media Watermark in the Gemini app and Google video editor Flow, with Search support planned for the near future.
Invisible Watermarks Remain in Place
The change only affects the prominent visual marks overlaid on AI-generated outputs. Google stressed that invisible SynthID watermarks and C2PA standard metadata will continue to be embedded in all generated content. This means users can still ask Gemini or Google Search to verify whether a given image, video, or song was produced by AI.
Balancing Safety and Creative Control
We are 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.
Google also announced the open-sourcing of a new library called Credentio, which lets developers embed a local validation mechanism in their applications for verifying C2PA content credentials.
The move comes amid an intensifying debate over AI content labeling. Earlier this week, Anthropic drew criticism from some Claude users after it began watermarking text generated by its AI models to comply with the European Union AI Act transparency requirements. That decision sparked heated discussion about whether visible watermarks could expose workers and students who use AI tools.
Google approach effectively gives users a choice, preserving invisible tracking while removing the visual indicator that can make AI-generated content look less polished. The EU Article 50 transparency obligations, which become applicable in August 2026, require synthetic media to be marked in machine-readable formats, a standard Google says it continues to meet through SynthID and C2PA.
Sources: TechCrunch; The Verge; Google Developer Blog
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