You can now turn off Google Gemini’s visible watermarks
The Verge Emma Roth ● Covered by 2 sources
Google is letting people hide Gemini’s visible AI watermark now. The files still carry invisible tracking, so this is mostly about how polished the output looks.
Based on reporting by The Verge, Emma Roth — read the original for the full story.
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Google is making its AI output look a little less obvious. Users can now switch off a new “Media watermark” setting in Gemini and in Flow, Google’s AI video generator, which removes the visible “sparkle” mark from content made with its tools.
That watermark sits in the bottom-right corner of images, videos, and music generated with Google’s Nano Banana and Omni models. Until now, it was part of the package. Now it’s optional.
But the change is cosmetic, not a free pass. Josh Woodward, Google’s vice president of Google Labs, Gemini, and AI Studio, said the content will still carry invisible SynthID watermarks and C2PA metadata in the background.
So Google is loosening the visible tell while keeping the machine-readable trail. That’s a neat compromise if you want cleaner-looking output, and a reminder that the company still wants some way to identify where the media came from.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the usual AI compromise: make the output prettier, keep the tracking buried where normal people won’t notice. Openly visible watermarks were always a little clunky, but removing them also makes synthetic media easier to pass off as ordinary. The industry loves flexibility right up until it has to explain accountability.
Read more about this at: The Verge