Google took a radical approach: if universal AI content detectors fail, the watermark must be embedded directly into the generation process. This concept led to the development of SynthID, a technology that is now used by default in Gemini. Any text or image created through the Google API now carries an invisible marker. For autobloggers, this effectively means losing control over their content.
The reason is simple. Attempts to build universal detectors have consistently failed. Systems designed to distinguish human-written text from AI-generated text produced endless false positives. Journalistic pieces were flagged as “machine-made,” while GPT outputs often slipped through as “human-written“. Faced with this unreliability, Google turned to DeepMind to develop SynthID, a watermarking system that embeds a statistical signature directly into generated text or images. In Gemini, this signature is now inseparable from the output.
How SynthID works
In text, this is not done through metadata or hidden symbols, but rather, at the level of token probabilities. When a language model selects the next word, it uses a probability distribution. For example, the probabilities for “cat,” “dog,” and “bird” are 0.31, 0.28, and 0.14, respectively. SynthID shifts these probabilities slightly according to a pseudorandom rule.
The result is text that remains readable and natural to humans but that, when analyzed for word sequences (e.g., n-grams of five tokens), exhibits a distinctive statistical pattern. This pattern is invisible to the reader, but Google’s detector can identify it: “This text was generated and watermarked by SynthID.”
The principle is similar for images. During generation, tiny distortions are embedded at the pixel and frequency levels. These distortions are imperceptible to the human eye, yet they survive compression, resizing, cropping, and filtering. With its detector, Google can easily identify images created by its model.
If you want to dive deeper into the technical details, check out the Introducing SynthID Text.
Why Google does this
The official narrative sounds noble: fighting disinformation, building trust, and promoting “responsible AI.” In reality, however, the point is to ensure that Google can always prove that: “This text or image came from our services.”
This looks impressive to PR and regulators. For the company, it’s an insurance policy. Google can claim that it took responsibility, and if someone removes the watermark or misuses the content, Google can’t be blamed.
Why this is a problem for autobloggers
This is a direct limitation for blog and website owners. Imagine generating an article with Gemini. It looks like normal text, but it has an invisible stamp that says, “AI-generated by Google.”
The risks include:
- Any third-party service, search engine, or social network with access to the detector can instantly identify the text as AI-generated.
- For SEO, this is a threat. Google says it “doesn’t penalize” AI content, but if it has the technical ability to flag machine-written texts, it’s hard to believe ranking will never be affected.
- You lose control over your own content. Even if the text looks natural, the decision about its “machine” status has already been made for you.
And yes, this applies not only to text. All images created with Google’s models also receive SynthID watermarks.
How other models differ
It’s important to distinguish between text and image models here because they have different approaches to “watermarks.”
Text models: OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, DeepSeek, and most open-source models do not embed hidden watermarks in text. OpenAI’s GPT models and Anthropic’s Claude output “clean” text that does not contain statistical patterns like SynthID. For autoblogging, this means alternative text engines are safer if you don’t want your content to be automatically flagged as “machine-generated.”
Image models: OpenAI’s DALL·E 3 uses another approach – images receive C2PA metadata. But these are just regular file tags: they are easily lost when resaving or cropping. Google, by contrast, embeds SynthID at the pixel and frequency level, making the mark far more resilient.
Popular image generators integrated into the CyberSEO Pro and RSS Retriever plugins, such as GPT-Image-1, MidJourney, Stable Diffusion, and Flux, do not leave hidden watermarks in their outputs. Each model has its own style and quality, but none force a watermark on users like Google does.
Recommendations
If you use autoblogging and want to ensure that your articles and product descriptions remain “clean,” opt for these alternative models. They won’t leave invisible markers or create extra SEO risks.
However, Gemini is sometimes still needed. For example, it might outperform other models in a specific niche. If so, remember that CyberSEO Pro and RSS Retriever include built-in tools to protect you. These plugins support the most popular spinners, including SpinnerChief, SpinRewriter, ChimpRewriter, and WordAI, as well as the built-in Synonymizer/Rewriter.
Simply run the generated text through any of these tools, and the SynthID watermark will disappear. The article will remain clear and readable to the reader, but the watermark that Google carefully embedded will vanish.
