Apple adds invisible SynthID marks to AI images in iOS 27.2

Apple released iOS 27.2 on Oct. 26, adding Google’s SynthID watermark to images made in Image Playground and to some pictures altered with generative tools in Photos. The update is available for eligible iPhones worldwide, with iPadOS 27.2 receiving similar features and security fixes. SynthID is embedded invisibly in an image’s pixels, rather than stored as metadata that may be stripped when a file is shared or screenshotted. Google says the marker is designed to survive cropping, filters and compression without affecting image quality. Every Image Playground creation now carries the watermark. Yahoo’s testing found that Photos tools Extend and Reframe also marked their resulting images, while Clean Up did so inconsistently: larger edits added the marker, but small changes did not. The distinction means the system does not label every image that has received an AI-assisted adjustment. Photos has no built-in SynthID reader. To check an image, users must upload it to Google’s SynthID Detector website. As reported earlier this month, Google opened that detector worldwide for watermark checks, while cautioning that a negative result cannot establish that a picture is genuine because it recognises markers only from Google and participating partners. Apple announced its intention to add SynthID at WWDC26 in June, when it also overhauled Image Playground with photorealistic image generation. The iOS release arrives as AI tools make synthetic and heavily altered photographs harder to distinguish from camera-captured images. The update also expanded Siri AI to French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish. Siri can now recall past conversations and draw context from material including photos attached in Messages, Calendar attendees, voicemails, Safari history and the Reading List, though the feature remains unavailable in the European Union and mainland China. Siri AI support is limited to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16 models and newer devices. Apple said it planned to add traditional Chinese, Norwegian, Turkish and Vietnamese to Siri AI by the end of the year.