SynthID is Google DeepMind's watermark for AI content, and in text it works nothing like a logo in the corner of an image. As Gemini writes, it scores every possible next word, and SynthID uses a secret key to tilt those scores in a pattern only Google's detector can recognize. Nothing is added to the page: no hidden characters, no metadata. The mark lives in which words Gemini chose, so it travels with the text through copy and paste and holds up through cropping, a few changed words, and mild paraphrasing.
Google's own developer documentation outlines where it breaks: detector confidence drops sharply when text is thoroughly rewritten or translated, and the mark is weaker on short, factual answers where Gemini has fewer word choices to play with. Anthropic's Claude Watermark is also reportedly derived from SynthID text. The Watermark Remover is built for this purpose. It doesn't swap synonyms and hope. It rewrites sentence structure the way a real edit would, which is the type of change SynthID isn't built to survive.