Technologies

Google Says Gemini Will Now Be Able to Identify AI Images, but There’s a Big Catch

You can now ask Gemini if an image is made with Google’s AI.

Google’s betting invisible AI watermarks will be just as good as visible ones. The company is continuing its week of Gemini 3 news with an announcement that it’s bringing its AI content detector, SynthID detector, out of a private beta for everyone to use.

This news comes in tandem with the release of nano banana pro, Google’s ultrapopular AI image editor. The new pro model comes with a lot of upgrades, including the ability to create legible text and upscale your images to 4K. That’s great for creators who use AI, but it also means it will be harder than ever to identify AI-generated content.

We’ve had deepfakes since long before generative AI. But AI tools, like the ones Google and OpenAI develop, let anyone create convincing fake content quicker and cheaper than ever before. That’s led to a massive influx of AI content online, everything from low-quality AI slop to realistic-looking deepfakes. OpenAI’s viral AI video app, Sora, was another major tool that showed us how easily these AI tools can be abused. It’s not a new problem, but AI has led to a dramatic escalation of the deepfake crisis.

That’s why SynthID was created. Google introduced SynthID in 2023, and every AI model it has released since then has attached these invisible watermarks to AI content. Google adds a small, visible, sparkle-shaped watermark, too, but neither really help when you’re quickly scrolling your social media feed and not vigorously analyzing each post. To help prevent the deepfake crisis (that the company helped create) from getting worse, Google is introducing a new tool to use to identify AI content.

SynthID Detector does exactly what its name implies; it analyzes images and can pick up on the invisible SynthID watermark. So in theory, you can upload an image to Gemini and ask the chatbot whether it was created with AI. But there’s a huge catch — Gemini can only confirm if an image was made with Google’s AI, not any other company’s. Because there are so many AI image and video models available, that means Gemini likely isn’t able to tell you if it was AI-generated with a non-Google program.

Right now, you can only ask about images, but Google said in a blog post that it plans to expand the capabilities to video and audio. No matter how limited, tools like these are still a step in the right direction. There are a number of AI detection tools, but none of them are perfect. Generative media models are improving quickly, sometimes too quickly for detection tools to keep up. That’s why it’s incredibly important to label any AI content you’re sharing online and to remain dubious of any suspicious images or videos you see in your feeds.

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For more, check out everything in Gemini 3 and what’s new in nano banana pro.

Technologies

Your Next Vacation Starts in a Chat: TripAdvisor Debuts App Inside ChatGPT

You can tap AI and TripAdvisor for your travel planning.

You may already use artificial intelligence for planning vacations, but now you can use a new TripAdvisor app inside of ChatGPT to book hotels. The app puts TripAdvisor’s reviews and hotel insights directly into ChatGPT. It’s «a new AI-powered way to experience the best of TripAdvisor,» according to the travel company.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

Using the app, trip planners can see top-rated TripAdvisor hotels on an interactive map. They can also read TripAdvisor review summaries, access details about hotels, including images and amenities, and refine results with conversational follow-ups.

Once a would-be traveler selects a hotel, they’ll see available deals from booking sites. When they choose one, they will be redirected to TripAdvisor or one of its partners to complete the booking.

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The new app is available to logged-in ChatGPT users in the US on Free, Go, Plus and Pro plans. You can start using it by opening ChatGPT, navigating to Settings, then Apps & Connectors, and Browse Apps and connect to TripAdvisor. (You should only have to follow these steps once.) Then, and on subsequent visits, simply start your message in ChatGPT with the word TripAdvisor.

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Technologies

Group Chats With ChatGPT Are Rolling Out Globally

OpenAI wants you to collaborate with its chatbot in a group setting.

Last week, OpenAI — always looking for opportunities to put its chatbot into new spaces — introduced Group Chats with ChatGPT baked right in. Based on early feedback, it’s now expanding the feature to all logged-in users on ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus and Pro plans globally over the coming days.

The feature is pitched as a new way to use ChatGPT with other people, especially in collaboration efforts, like planning a big event.

Up to 20 people can be added to a group chat, and messages between individuals don’t count against the rate limit to ChatGPT — only when it responds.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

Group chats use ChatGPT-5.1 Auto. OpenAI has also introduced some new implementations of how and when the chatbot responds. It’s been taught new social behaviors for group chats and will apparently follow the flow of the conversation and stay quiet or chime in based on what’s being said.

Adding «ChatGPT» to a message you send will always yield a response from the AI chatbot. You can also provide custom instructions to ChatGPT for the entire chat if you want it to reply in a certain tone or personality, and it can react to messages with emoji.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Group Chats don’t use memory from your existing personal chats, and new memory isn’t created from group conversations, though OpenAI says it’s exploring a way for you to opt in to use existing memory in the future.

If you’re concerned that you’ll be thrown into a dozen chats without your permission, then you’ll likely be happy to hear that you must accept an invitation before you can be added to a group chat with ChatGPT. Additional safeguards are also in place for users under the age of 18, which will reduce sensitive content to all within the group chat.

OpenAI says Group Chats are the beginning of its effort to make ChatGPT more of a shared and collaborative space for people.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for Nov. 21, #424

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Nov. 21, No. 424.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is a fun one. If you know a Gen Z person, you might be familiar with their favorite nonsense phrase, «6-7.» The puzzle editors throw a 6 and a 7 into the puzzle today just to see if we’re paying attention. Do the numbers end up in the same group? I bet you know the answer to that one. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Splish-splash.

Green group hint: Football score.

Blue group hint: Colorado QB.

Purple group hint: Not small.