Google lets users switch off the visible AI watermark, while the invisible one stays on

Google made its visible AI watermark optional in the Gemini apps in mid-August 2026, exposed as a Media Watermark setting under Settings. Its own help page is precise about the limits: the control applies "only to Gemini Apps (web and mobile), not AI features in other Google products"; users in India, South Korea and Vietnam see it only on an AI Ultra subscription; and anyone signed in through a work or school account cannot turn it off at all. What does not change is the machine-readable provenance — "all AI-generated media created or edited with Gemini Apps includes an invisible SynthID watermark", and Content Credentials metadata under the C2PA standard continues to be embedded either way. Google also released Credentio, an open-source C++ library for C2PA content credentials.

What it means The two labs moved in opposite directions in the same week: one is making the mark a property of the model, the other is letting users take the visible half off. What survives both is the invisible layer, so plan on machine-readable provenance travelling with everything you generate even when nothing on the image says so — and note that if your team is on a work account, the visible mark is not yours to remove.