Check if a photo is AI on your phone

What your phone can and can't tell you

Your phone can read the labels that AI tools leave in a file, and Google's tools can look for Google's watermark. That covers many edits made on phones and many images from Google's models. It doesn't cover a picture that lost its labels on the way to you, or one from a generator that never added any. For those, you need a check that reads the pixels.

There are four routes, and they answer different questions:

• The photo's info panel: edit labels from your phone's own AI tools, and Content Credentials where the phone shows them.
• About this image, in Google Lens or Circle to Search: whether Google's watermark was found, the file's metadata, and other places the image appears online.
• The Gemini app: "Was this created with Google AI?".
• Perspicax in your browser: whether the picture itself looks generated, label or not.

None of them needs an app you don't already have. The steps below go from the quickest check to the most thorough.

On an iPhone

1. 1

   Open the photo's info

   In Photos, open the picture and swipe up or tap the info button. Pictures changed with Clean Up are marked there. A photo saved from a chat or a website may show nothing at all, which tells you nothing either way.

2. 2

   Use Google Lens

   In the Google app, tap the Lens icon, choose the photo and open the "About this image" panel. It can show whether Google's watermark was found, what the file's metadata says and where else the image appears.

3. 3

   Check the file, not a screenshot

   If the photo came in a chat, save the image itself. A screenshot drops the info panel's details and every label in the file.

4. 4

   Check the pixels with Perspicax

   Open perspicax.io in Safari, then choose the photo, or copy the image and paste it on the page. The answer comes back in seconds.

On an Android phone

1. 1

   Look in Google Photos

   Open the photo and swipe up for its details. Pictures changed with Magic Editor and other Google AI tools show "Edited with Google AI". On a Pixel 10, photos also carry Content Credentials, which Google Photos shows in the photo's About panel.

2. 2

   Check for Samsung's mark

   On Galaxy phones, photos changed with Generative Edit get a small sparkle mark in a corner, and the edit is recorded in the file's details. A crop removes the mark, so its absence proves nothing.

3. 3

   Use Circle to Search

   Long-press the home button or the navigation bar, circle the image and open "About this image". It shows what Google can find: its watermark, the metadata and other places the image appears.

4. 4

   Ask the Gemini app

   Upload the image and ask "Was this created with Google AI?". It looks for Google's watermark, needs you to be signed in, and has a daily limit.

5. 5

   Check the pixels with Perspicax

   Open perspicax.io in Chrome or your usual browser, then choose the photo or paste it. There is no app to install.

Check any photo with Perspicax in your browser

Perspicax works on a phone the same way it works on a computer. Proven computer vision techniques and TrueEye 2.3, our state-of-the-art detector, examine every region of the image, down to the pixels. It doesn't depend on a label or a watermark, so it still answers when both are gone.

1. Open perspicax.io in your phone's browser.
2. Tap to choose a photo from your library, or copy an image, or a link to one, and paste it on the page.
3. Wait a few seconds while every region of the image is checked.
4. Read the answer and the reason given with it.

In testing, Perspicax caught 98.6% of images from the newest OpenAI, Google and ByteDance models on average, and wrongly flagged fewer than 1 in 2,000 original camera photos.

Get the right copy of the image

What you check matters as much as how you check it. On a phone, the picture in front of you has often passed through several apps, and each one may have changed it.

• Save the image, not a screenshot: long-press the picture and choose save or download. A screenshot drops the file's labels and adds your screen around the picture.
• A screenshot still works with Perspicax: it crops a screenshot to the photo inside it. The labels are gone, though, so the phone's own checks won't find anything.
• Copy the image's address for web images: in a browser, long-press the picture and copy the image link, then paste it into Perspicax. A link to the post or the page is not a link to the image.
• Ask the sender for the original: in many messaging apps, sending a photo as a document or file keeps more of its details than sending it as a picture.

Three everyday situations

• A forward in a family group: save the picture from the chat, check it on perspicax.io, then search for it with Google Lens before you pass it on. More in check a photo before you share it.
• A profile photo on a dating or social app: save it if the app lets you; if not, take a screenshot that shows the photo alone, which Perspicax crops to the picture. Then search for it with Lens. More in dating profile photos.
• A photo of damage, a parcel or a receipt someone sent you: ask for the original file, or a new photo taken now from another angle, and check that. More in AI photos in claims.

Read the results together

The phone's own checks and Perspicax answer different questions, so read them side by side:

• A label or Google's watermark was found: strong evidence that an AI tool made or changed the image. Perspicax tells you whether the picture as a whole looks generated.
• No label and no watermark: this proves nothing on its own, because most images lose their labels on the way to your phone. The pixel check matters most here.
• Perspicax says likely AI-generated: the picture as a whole looks generated, whatever the labels say or don't say.
• Perspicax says inconclusive: there isn't enough evidence either way. Look for the source, or ask for the original file.

To find where a picture came from, Google Lens doubles as a reverse image search. Our reverse image search guide shows how to use it the way fact-checkers do.

Do you need a detector app?

No. Your phone's own tools read the labels, and Perspicax runs in the browser, so there is nothing to install and nothing to give access to your whole photo library. If you do try an app, check what access it asks for before you grant it.

Whatever you use, treat a single answer as one signal among several. For a photo that matters, such as a forward you are about to share, a profile you are about to trust or evidence you are about to act on, combine the checks above with a look at where the picture came from. Our guide to checking a photo before you share it puts it all into a two-minute routine.