August 17, 2026
Google is updating its AI-generated content policy to let users remove visible watermarks from images and other media produced by its tools. The invisible SynthID watermark, however, will stay embedded in the content regardless. This marks a shift in how Google balances user flexibility with its underlying approach to AI provenance tracking.
A new benchmark from Moonshot AI isolates visual perception from logical reasoning in multimodal models, and the results are sobering. No tested frontier model clears 60 percent accuracy, with GPT-4o leading by only a narrow margin. The findings suggest that many errors previously attributed to faulty reasoning may actually originate much earlier, at the point of reading the image itself.
What began as a wave of skepticism after OpenAI's Sora failed to immediately reshape filmmaking has given way to a maturing AI video industry with real commercial footholds. Companies like Promise are embedding themselves near Hollywood studios, Netflix is integrating AI tools across hundreds of titles, and startups in the space are commanding multi-billion-dollar valuations. The business infrastructure - job roles, revenue splits, and specialized vendors - is now catching up to the technology i
Hany Farid, one of the foremost researchers on synthetic media and digital forensics, sits down with 404 Media to discuss the trajectory of deepfakes - from their origins to where the technology is headed. The conversation covers how detection, policy, and public perception have struggled to keep pace with the rapid advancement of generative tools. It is a grounded look at what the erosion of verifiable reality means for individuals and institutions alike.
