How the check works

Nothing is uploaded. Your own browser does all of it, in four passes.

1First. We open the file up

A photo file has hidden compartments where information gets stored. We look in all of them, including the compressed ones most tools skip.

2Second. We check what the file claims

Some cameras and AI tools attach a signed record of how a picture was made. Most tools just read it out and repeat it. We check the signature itself, and then we check the certificate behind it against the official list of authorities allowed to issue them. The maths, right here, without sending your photo anywhere.

3Third, what the AI left behind

Image generators save the prompt, the model and the settings straight into the file, and almost nobody removes them. If they are there, we show you the exact words.

4Fourth. The shape of the file itself

This is what still works after Instagram or WhatsApp has wiped everything else. AI pictures come out in a few fixed sizes, and they are compressed in ways no camera uses.

Which files can answer, and which never will

Everything this tool reads lives inside the file itself. A picture that has been re-photographed, re-encoded or re-saved arrives with all of it gone, and no amount of analysis brings back what is not there. The rule is simple: the closer to the original, the more there is to find.

If all you have is a screenshot, the useful move is not to analyse it but to ask for the original. “Can you send that as a file rather than a photo?” is usually all it takes, and it is the difference between an answer and a shrug.

Which AI tools we recognise by name

When a tool writes its own name into a file, we read it back. These are the ones people ask about most. The full list is generated from the detector’s own code, so it is exactly what the software looks for.

• AI OpenAIChatGPT · DALL·E · GPT Image · Sora
• G GoogleGemini · Imagen · Nano Banana · Veo · SynthID
• Mj MidjourneyMidjourney
• SD Stability AIStable Diffusion · ComfyUI · AUTOMATIC1111 · InvokeAI · Fooocus · Draw Things
• A AdobeFirefly
• x xAIGrok
• FX Black Forest LabsFLUX
• Mt MetaMeta AI (Emu)
• Ms MicrosoftDesigner · Bing Image Creator

Anthropic’s Claude is missing on purpose: it does not make images, so there is nothing to find in a file. ChatGPT does make them. That is OpenAI’s image tool, and it is on the list above. When a file has been stripped of everything, no name can be read at all; the size of the picture still narrows it to two or three candidates, and that shortlist appears in your result.

How to read the result

Every check ends in one of eight verdicts. None of them is a percentage, because a percentage would be invented.

Origin verified

Proven real, signed, and we checked the signature.We checked the signature ourselves, here on your device. It is valid and it belongs to this exact picture. Nobody moved it here from another file. That is far stronger than the ordinary details inside a photo, which anyone can type in. Who vouched for the signer is a separate question, and the answer is below.

Looks like a real photo

Probably real, camera details are there, no sign of AI.The details inside match a real camera, and there is no sign of AI anywhere. One caveat: those details are plain text and can be copied from a real photo onto a fake one, so take this as a good sign rather than proof.

Made by AI

Certain. The file names the AI that made it.The file says so itself. The program that made this picture wrote its own name inside, and nothing else does that.

Built like an AI image

Built like AI output, no label left, but the shape of the file gives it away.This is read off how the file is put together, not off a label its maker left behind. Strong, but not the same as the file saying so itself.

Partly made by AI

AI was used, to change an existing picture, not create one.It looks like AI was used to change an existing picture rather than to create one from nothing.

Origin record fails

Careful. The signed record does not match this picture.This file carries a signed record of where it came from, and that record fails the check. Either the picture was changed after it was signed, the record belongs to a different photo, or the certificates behind it do not add up. Whatever it claims, do not rely on it.

Conflicting signals

Careful. The file claims AI and camera at the same time.The file says AI in one place and camera in another. Usually that means AI content was pasted into a real photo, or details were copied between files. Worth reading closely. This is the interesting case.

Can’t tell from this file

No answer. Nothing left in the file to read.Its structure is unremarkable too. That is not a hint in either direction. It is simply an absence, and it is the most common result for anything saved from social media.

And how much the answer weighs

The verdict says which way the answer points. Beside it, every result carries a second reading: how conclusive the evidence behind it actually is. This is the number every other detector prints as a confidence percentage, and the reason ours is not one is simple. There is no dataset here that could say what share of files like yours are generated, so a percentage would be a decoration with a decimal point. What can be stated exactly is which of these five situations you are in.

1. 5/5Settled by mathematicsA cryptographic signature either held or failed. This is the one answer here that is proof rather than judgement.
2. 4/5The file declares its own originThe software that made this image wrote its own name or its own label into the file. Nothing else produces that.
3. 3/5A pattern, not a declarationNo declaration survives, but several independent traits of the file line up. Each has innocent explanations; together they are a lead worth following, not a finding.
4. 2/5Something to go on, but forgeableThere is information in the file, and it is the kind anyone can copy from a real photograph onto a fake one. Useful, not conclusive.
5. 1/5Nothing left in this file to readThe file carries nothing to work from. That is not a hint in either direction, and it is the ordinary result for anything saved off a messenger or a social platform.

And how each piece of evidence was weighed

Under the verdict, evidence is sorted by weight. Proof: only the software that made the file writes this, and a camera cannot. Strong signs: point the same way, but each has an innocent explanation too. Background: what the file has been through. If the Proof block is empty, the answer is a judgement, not a fact.