If you've gotten into the habit of looking for the small sparkle icon in the corner of an image to tell whether it came from Google's AI, that habit just got less reliable. Google has added a setting that lets people turn that visible mark off.
What changed. Gemini (and Google's video/music tool, Flow) now has a "Media watermark" switch in settings — On or Off. With it off, images made with Gemini's image tool, videos made with its video tool, and music made with its music tool no longer carry the small visible AI mark in the corner. You'll find it in the web version of Gemini by clicking the gear icon in the bottom left, then "Media watermark." Google has said it plans to bring the same option to Search.
What did NOT change. Turning the switch off only removes the mark you can see. Every file still carries an invisible digital watermark (called SynthID) and metadata (called C2PA) embedded in the file itself, regardless of the setting. Tools built to check for that hidden marker — like Google Search's "About this image" feature — can still identify the content as AI-generated even with the visible mark switched off.
One exception. In places where the law requires a visible AI label — China is the main example — Gemini will keep the visible watermark on no matter what the user's setting says.
Why this matters for you. Until now, "no sparkle in the corner" was a reasonable, if imperfect, sign that an image probably wasn't from Gemini. That's no longer true — anyone can now choose to hide it. If you're trying to judge whether a photo, video, or song you're looking at is real, a missing visible watermark tells you nothing on its own. Our guide on how to spot AI-generated photos covers what still works: a reverse image search and checking for that invisible Content Credentials (C2PA) label at a site like verify.contentauthenticity.org, both of which look past whatever visible mark a creator chose to show or hide.
Sources
- Google will now allow users to remove visible watermark from its AI generations — TechCrunch
- Google now lets you nix visible Gemini image watermarks — PCWorld
- Gemini now lets you turn off the visible watermark on your AI creations — TechRadar
- Google Gemini's visible watermarks are now optional — Dataconomy