Google will now allow users to remove visible watermark from its AI generations

<p id="speakable-summary" class="wp-block-paragraph">Google <a rel="nofollow" href="https://x.com/joshwoodward/status/2088259242423968162">announced</a> on Friday that it will now allow users to remove a visible watermark from its AI generations, including images, videos, and songs. The company specified that this won’t affect the invisible <a href="https://techcrunch.com/snippet/3009804/google-says-synth-id-has-been-used-to-watermark-over-10-billion-pieces-of-content/">SynthID watermark</a> and C2PA standard-related metadata.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Josh Woodward, the company’s VP for Gemini, <a rel="nofollow" href="https://x.com/joshwoodward/status/2088259242423968162">said in a post on X</a> that this toggle will be available for Nano Banana, Omni, and Lyria models. He specified that the setting to turn the visible watermark off will be available in Gemini and Google’s <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/20/google-debuts-an-ai-powered-video-tool-called-flow/">video editor, Flow</a>, with support for Search coming soon.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The change reflects an evolving approach to labeling AI-generated media, as visible watermarks can often make content less useful for professional and creative work, but the need to identify AI-generated content remains. </p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">“We’re 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. So you can still use Gemini or Search to see if an image was AI-generated,” he wrote.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The feature is rolling out in the coming days, and once available, users will be able to go to <em>Settings &gt; Media Watermark</em> to turn the visible mark on or off. </p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google is also open-sourcing a new library called <a rel="nofollow" href="https://developers.googleblog.com/introducing-credentio-open-source-c-library-for-c2pa-content-credentials-from-google/">Credentio</a> to let developers embed a local validation mechanism in their apps.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This comes after <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/12/some-claude-users-are-mad-that-anthropics-new-watermarks-will-catch-them-cheating-at-their-jobs-classes/">Anthropic’s hotly debated move</a> to include <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/11/anthropic-says-it-will-watermark-text-generated-by-its-ai-models/">a watermark in text and files generated by Claude</a> to comply with EU regulations. </p>