Google Photos can now detect AI-enhanced images

With AI photo-generating tools becoming more powerful at a rapid pace, it’s becoming harder to tell which photos are real and which ones have been enhanced with AI . In response, some companies have added ways for people to tell when an AI model has created or edited a photo. Now, Google has added a new feature to its Photos app that reads a photo’s metadata and tells you whether it has been enhanced with AI in the past.

Google Photos has an AI recognition tool

As announced on Google's The Keyword blog, the Photos app will now tell you whether a photo's metadata contains any information about its use of AI:

Photos edited with tools like Magic Editor, Magic Eraser, and Zoom Enhance already include metadata based on technical standards from the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) to indicate that the photo has been edited with Generative AI . Now, things will go one step further, displaying this information alongside information like file name, location, and backup status in the Photos app.

When you view the details of an image in Google Photos, the app will tell you at the bottom of the panel if someone edited the image using AI. It will also tell you which tools were used to edit the image, including non-AI tools like Best Take on the Pixel 8 and Pixel 9 and Add Me on the Pixel 9.

This new feature appears to be limited to images edited through Google Photos without changing the metadata to remove any traces of AI editing. So it’s not designed to help you spot AI-generated images online; it’s just meant to let you know which images in your albums have been digitally enhanced and which haven’t.