Google lets users hide its AI watermark

Google is rolling out a setting that lets users turn off the visible watermark on images and video made with its Nano Banana, Omni, and Lyria models across Gemini and the Flow video editor, with Search support coming soon. The toggle lives under Settings > Media Watermark and arrives within the coming days.

Google frames the change as “striking a balance between creative control and safety,” acknowledging that a visible mark limits how creators can use AI-generated work professionally. The invisible SynthID watermark and C2PA content-credential metadata stay embedded regardless of the setting, so Gemini and Search can still identify the content as AI-generated even with the visible mark switched off.

What it means for you

If you use Google’s AI image or video tools for client-facing or published work, the new toggle removes a visible flag that made output look unmistakably AI-made, but it does not remove the underlying provenance signal. Anything you publish can still be identified as AI-generated by anyone with SynthID detection access, so this changes what your audience sees, not what a platform or regulator can determine later. It lands the same week Apple confirmed it’s negotiating pay-per-use content deals with publishers for its own AI, a reminder that every major platform is drawing its own line between giving users flexibility and keeping enough of a paper trail to answer for what its AI produced.