Which AI image generator made this?
Each generator leaves different fingerprints — some sign their files with C2PA Content Credentials, some add invisible watermarks, and some leave nothing but pixels. Here's how to tell them apart, and how to verify any image for free.
Provenance at a glance
| Generator | C2PA credentials | Invisible watermark | Maker |
|---|---|---|---|
| Midjourney | No | No | Midjourney, Inc. |
| DALL·E 3 | Yes | No | OpenAI |
| GPT-4o Images | Yes | No | OpenAI |
| Stable Diffusion | No | Sometimes | Stability AI / open source |
| Flux | No | No | Black Forest Labs |
| Grok (Aurora) | No | No | xAI |
| Adobe Firefly | Yes | Yes | Adobe |
| Google Gemini / Imagen | Yes | Yes | Google DeepMind |
“Sometimes” = present only in certain pipelines (e.g., Stable Diffusion's official library vs. community forks). Credentials and watermarks can be removed by screenshots and some editors.
Pick a generator
Not sure which one — or whether it's AI at all?
Upload the image once and get both a pixel-level AI probability and a read of any hidden provenance metadata.
Frequently asked questions
Can you tell exactly which AI made an image?
Not always with certainty from pixels alone. What is reliable is real-vs-AI. Some generators (DALL·E, GPT-4o, Firefly, Google) additionally sign their files with C2PA Content Credentials, which names the source — our metadata checker reads that when the file is intact.
Which AI generators add Content Credentials?
OpenAI (DALL·E 3 and GPT-4o), Adobe Firefly and Google embed C2PA. Midjourney, Flux and Grok do not. Stable Diffusion can add an invisible watermark via the official library but usually doesn't in community tools.
Does a missing watermark mean an image is real?
No. Most generators add no watermark, and screenshots strip C2PA credentials. Absence of provenance is not proof of authenticity — use the visual detector alongside the metadata check.
What about SynthID?
Google marks its AI images with SynthID, an invisible watermark. It can only be verified with Google's own detector, so third-party tools rely on C2PA metadata and pixel analysis instead.
Related: AI image checker · AI art detector · metadata & Content Credentials checker · how to tell if an image is AI-generated.