Technical Guides
Background on the formats, watermarks and forensic techniques that decide whether an image reads as camera output.
- How the SynthID watermark works
SynthID is Google's watermark for AI media, embedded in the pixels rather than the metadata. What Google says it survives, how it is checked, and what we know. - What is C2PA metadata?
C2PA is a signed provenance record attached to an image. What a manifest holds, why it is tamper-evident, why it can still be removed, and what it proves. - Why AI detectors flag real photos
AI image detectors return a probability, not a fact, and real photos get flagged. The common causes, what you can check yourself, and what to do if it happens. - Does EXIF data prove that a photo is real?
EXIF is unsigned text that any tool can write. What camera metadata can suggest, what it cannot prove, and which signals are stronger evidence of a real photo. - How JPEG quantization tables identify the device that wrote a file
A JPEG carries the tables used to compress it. Manufacturers use their own, so the table identifies the software or the body that wrote the file. - Frequency-domain artifacts in generated images
A 2D Fourier transform of a generated image shows regularly spaced peaks that photographs do not have. Here is where they come from and how to see them. - The artifacts a diffusion model leaves in an image
Latent diffusion decodes through a VAE, and the decoder leaves its own traces: flattened texture, over-smooth gradients and a characteristic noise floor. - How to remove AI metadata from an image
C2PA manifests, XMP blocks and PNG text chunks record that a file was machine made. Exiftool and screenshots strip some of it by hand, each with real limits. - Why Instagram and Facebook put an AI info label on a photo
Instagram reads C2PA and IPTC digital-source-type fields written by generators, not the pixels. Strip that metadata and the automatic label has nothing to read. - How to remove an AI watermark from an image
There are three kinds of AI watermark: a drawn logo, data in the file, and a signal in the pixels. How to tell which one you have and what can be removed. - Can you remove SynthID from an image?
Honest answer on removing SynthID: no tool can promise it, and Google says it resists edits. What you can remove next to it, and what PassReal guarantees.