Terms of Use

Effective date: 11 August 2026 Last updated: 11 August 2026

These terms govern your use of SynthCheck at synthcheck.app (the "Service"), operated by [CONTROLLER NAME], [CONTROLLER ADDRESS], contactable at hello@synthcheck.app.

By using the Service you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the Service.

1. What SynthCheck is

SynthCheck is a free web tool that reads an image file in your own browser and reports the provenance information written inside it: C2PA Content Credentials, IPTC and XMP tags, EXIF camera fields, PNG text chunks, and known generator fingerprints.

The image is processed locally on your device. It is never uploaded to us. See the Privacy Policy.

2. THE OUTPUT IS NOT A FORENSIC DETERMINATION

Read this section before you rely on anything SynthCheck tells you.

SynthCheck reports metadata found in a file. Nothing more.

Its output is not a forensic determination, not an expert opinion, and not legal evidence. It must not be presented as any of those things.

Specifically, and without limitation:

a) An absence of AI markers is not proof that an image is real. Metadata is trivially stripped. Almost every social network, messaging app and content management system removes it during re-encoding. A screenshot removes it. Re-saving in most editors removes it. An "Inconclusive" result from SynthCheck means this file carries no provenance information — it does not mean the image was captured by a camera, and it never will.

b) The presence of markers is strong evidence, but it is not proof. Metadata can be written by hand, copied between files, or forged. C2PA manifests are cryptographically signed and therefore much harder to fake, but even a valid signature attests to a claim made by a signer, not to the truth of the underlying image.

c) EXIF camera fields can be fabricated or transplanted. A "Camera capture evidence" result is supporting evidence, not proof of authenticity.

d) We cannot read SynthID or other pixel-level watermarks. SynthID is embedded by Google DeepMind in the pixels themselves and there is no public detector for it. An image can be AI-generated and carry an intact SynthID watermark while SynthCheck reports nothing at all. Use Google's own SynthID Detector for that check.

e) We do not run a classifier and we do not output a confidence percentage. We show you the bytes and let you read them.

Consequently: do not use SynthCheck output as the sole or determinative basis for any decision with legal, financial, employment, academic, journalistic, reputational, safety, or evidential consequences. Do not submit it to a court, tribunal, regulator, insurer, editor, or disciplinary body as expert evidence. If you need a forensic conclusion, instruct a qualified image forensics expert.

You are responsible for how you interpret and use the output.

3. Provided free and as-is

The Service is free. You pay nothing and we owe you nothing beyond what the law requires of us.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, or non-infringement.

In particular we do not warrant that:

• the Service will be available, uninterrupted, or error-free;
• detection of any given generator, format, or marker is complete or correct;
• results are accurate, current, or suitable for your purpose;
• the Service will continue to exist. We may change, restrict, or shut it down at any time without notice and without liability.

New image generators appear constantly and existing ones change their metadata without warning. Our coverage will always be behind reality.

Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. If you are a consumer, your statutory rights are unaffected.

4. Acceptable use

You may use SynthCheck for any lawful purpose, including commercial work, without a licence fee and without attribution.

You must not:

• use the Service in a way that breaks any applicable law;
• attempt to attack, overload, disrupt, or gain unauthorised access to the Service or the infrastructure it runs on;
• scrape, embed, or automate the Service in a way that degrades it for other users, or wrap it as a paid product presented as your own without a separate agreement with us;
• remove, obscure, or alter any disclaimer or notice that accompanies the results;
• misrepresent SynthCheck output — for example by presenting an "Inconclusive" result as a finding of authenticity, describing the output as a forensic report or expert analysis, or attributing to SynthCheck a conclusion it did not reach;
• use the Service to harass, defame, or make unfounded public accusations against any person.

5. No use for evading provenance obligations

SynthCheck must not be used to help evade, defeat, or test the removal of content-provenance obligations or transparency markings.

The tool reads provenance markers. It does not remove them and offers no facility to do so. But we state the limit explicitly:

You must not use SynthCheck, or information obtained from it, to:

• check whether AI-origin markers have been successfully stripped from a file before distributing it as if it were human-made or camera-captured;
• develop, test, refine, or validate any technique, tool, or workflow for removing or corrupting C2PA manifests, IPTC DigitalSourceType tags, XMP provenance data, watermarks, or any other transparency marking;
• circumvent obligations to disclose or machine-readably mark AI-generated content, including those under Article 50 of the EU AI Act, or under the disclosure rules of any platform, publisher, employer, examination board, or electoral authority;
• assist anyone else in doing any of the above.

Provenance marking exists so that people can tell what they are looking at. Using a transparency tool to undermine transparency is a misuse of this Service and terminates your permission to use it.

6. Your images and your content

You keep all rights in the images you check. We never receive them, so we acquire no rights in them and we could not use them even if we wanted to.

You are responsible for having the right to process any image you check, and for complying with any confidentiality obligation that attaches to it. Because processing happens entirely in your browser, checking a confidential image does not disclose it to us — but that is a technical fact about our design, not legal advice about your obligations.

7. Intellectual property

The SynthCheck name, the site design, the page copy, and the detection engine are owned by [CONTROLLER NAME] and protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. These terms grant you no licence to them beyond using the site as intended in your browser.

Third-party names referenced in results — including Adobe, Google, OpenAI, Midjourney, Stability AI, Black Forest Labs and others — are the trademarks of their respective owners. They are used descriptively, to identify the source of a metadata marker. Their use does not imply any affiliation with, sponsorship by, or endorsement from those companies. SynthCheck is an independent project.

C2PA, IPTC, XMP and Exif are open specifications published by their respective standards bodies.

8. Advertising

The Service is funded by advertising. Ads are served by Google AdSense and its partners. We do not control which specific ads appear, and displaying an ad is not an endorsement of the advertiser or its products. Any dealing you have with an advertiser is between you and them.

Cookie use and consent are covered in the Privacy Policy and the Cookie Notice.

9. Third-party links

The Service links to external resources, including detection tools operated by others. We do not control those sites, do not endorse them, and are not responsible for their content, availability, or practices.

10. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law:

a) [CONTROLLER NAME] will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages arising out of or connected with your use of the Service.

b) Without limiting (a), we will not be liable for any loss of profit, revenue, business, contracts, goodwill, reputation, or anticipated savings; for any loss or corruption of data; or for any loss arising from a decision made in reliance on SynthCheck output — including any decision to publish, withhold, accept, reject, purchase, accuse, discipline, or take legal action.

c) Our total aggregate liability to you for all claims connected with the Service is limited to one hundred euros (EUR 100) or the equivalent in your local currency. This reflects the fact that the Service is provided free of charge.

d) These limits apply regardless of the legal theory relied upon, and whether or not we were advised of the possibility of the loss.

e) Nothing here excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, and if you are a consumer, none of this affects your mandatory statutory rights.

11. Indemnity

If you use the Service in breach of these terms — in particular sections 4 and 5 — and that causes a third-party claim against us, you agree to indemnify us for the reasonable costs and damages arising from it. This does not apply to consumers acting outside their trade or profession, to the extent local law prevents it.

12. Suspension and termination

We may restrict or block access to the Service at any time, for any reason, including breach of these terms. Since there are no accounts, this normally means technical blocking at the network level.

You may stop using the Service at any time. Sections 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11 and 13 survive.

13. Governing law and jurisdiction

These terms, and any dispute arising out of or in connection with them, are governed by the laws of [JURISDICTION], without regard to conflict-of-laws rules.

The courts of [JURISDICTION] have exclusive jurisdiction, except that if you are a consumer resident in the EEA or the UK, you keep the benefit of any mandatory protections of the law of your country of residence and may bring proceedings there.

14. General

Severability. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest remains in force and the unenforceable provision is applied as closely as possible to its intended effect.

No waiver. Not enforcing a term on one occasion does not waive it.

Entire agreement. These terms, together with the Privacy Policy and Cookie Notice, are the whole agreement between us about the Service.

No third-party rights. No one other than you and us may enforce these terms.

15. Changes to these terms

We may amend these terms. The current version is always at this URL and carries a "last updated" date. Material changes will be flagged on the site. Continuing to use the Service after a change means you accept the amended terms; if you do not accept them, stop using the Service.

16. Contact

hello@synthcheck.app — [CONTROLLER NAME], [CONTROLLER ADDRESS].

Note on this document

These terms are a template. They were drafted specifically for a free, fully client-side static tool with no backend, no user accounts, no image storage and no paid tier, funded by advertising, whose output reports file metadata and does not constitute a forensic conclusion.

They are not legal advice and no lawyer-client relationship arises from reading them. They have not been reviewed by a qualified lawyer, and they do not account for the specific circumstances, jurisdiction, or regulatory obligations of the operator.

Before publishing, have these reviewed by a qualified lawyer in the operator's jurisdiction. Consumer protection rules, the enforceability of liability caps, and the validity of exclusive jurisdiction clauses vary considerably between countries, and several clauses above (in particular sections 3, 10 and 11) are commonly restricted or void as against consumers. The liability cap figure and the governing-law choice are placeholders and must be set deliberately, not left as drafted.