How AI video gets marked, one generator at a time

GateTrue records what each AI video generator publishes about marking its output: what the free tier carries, what a paid plan changes, how the mark is removed, and what the vendor says is written into the file. Four fields, the same four for everyone. As of 2026-10-25.

Inclusion rule. Generators whose public pages state whether output carries a mark. Silence on the point means no row. Google (SynthID) is a marking scheme rather than a generator and has a row beside them. Order. Alphabetical by generator.

1What is recorded here

Each generator gets one page, and every page answers the same four questions in the same order. That uniformity is the point: a table where one product is described by its marketing and another by its plan table is not a comparison, it is two advertisements side by side. Fields come from the vendor's own public pages, and where a vendor does not publish an answer the field says so.

Two layers get conflated constantly in this subject and are kept apart here. A visible watermark is something a viewer sees and a crop removes. A machine-readable mark is a signal written into the file for software to find. Most vendors document one and say nothing about the other.

The four fields are fixed before any vendor is read, which is what keeps the table honest when a vendor publishes a great deal about one of them and nothing about the rest. A generator with a detailed plan table and no word about file contents ends up with three filled fields and one marked not documented, and that shape is itself informative: it says the vendor treats marking as a pricing question rather than a provenance one.

The opposite shape also exists now, and it arrived with the second batch of readings. Three generators describe a signal inside the file, name the standard it follows or the platform that reads it, and say nothing at all about plans, tiers or a switch. Their pages are written for developers and safety reviewers rather than for buyers, so the mark is presented as a property of the output instead of a feature to be purchased. Sorting the register by which fields a vendor fills separates those two kinds of company more sharply than sorting it by anything else.

2Start here

• Support table — fifteen generators, four fields, one row each.
• Generators — a page each, and the same four questions on all of them.
• Marked output — the names people search beside this register, read on the mark each one documents.
• Sora — a moving watermark on downloads, and C2PA metadata on everything.
• Amazon Nova Reel — an invisible watermark on all output, with a public way to read it.
• Wan — a request parameter decides, and it defaults to no stamp.
• Luma AI — a free-plan watermark that a later upgrade does not lift.
• D-ID — a full-screen mark, with a reason printed beside it.
• SceneMixer — a badge paid members can switch off, over an invisible layer its terms keep on.
• SynthID — an invisible mark with no removal documented.
• Protocol — how a field gets filled in, and what not documented means.
• What earns a row — vendor pages only; output and support replies do not count.
• How a row changes — two dates per field, and what each of them means.

3Explainers

How marking actually works under the hood, written for somebody who has to make a decision about it. These pages describe mechanisms; what any particular generator does about them is kept in the support table with a date on every field.

• Metadata vs watermark — two layers that live in different places and fail in opposite ways.
• Reading a plan table — how to tell an exclusion from a summary on a pricing grid.

4Questions the table can answer

Each of these takes one question, answers it in a sentence, then shows the rows it rests on. They read the same sixteen entries as the table; what differs is what is being asked of them.

• What the free tiers put on your file — five of nine rows are omissions, not sentences.
• What it takes to get the mark off — $10 to $30, and nobody is pricing the mark.
• A paid switch, and a layer that stays — one generator, two layers, each controlled differently.
• The column four vendors fill — and why the other eleven stay in the table.
• What survives being re-encoded — two layers that fail in opposite directions.
• Who can check whether a file is marked — four published routes, at three distances.
• At which step the mark gets written — generation, compositing, or unstated.
• When two marking systems land on one file — the collision one vendor names.

5How entries are kept

Both dates on a field mean different things: one records when the value was written down, the other when the vendor page was last opened to confirm it. Only the second moves on a confirmation. If the vendor page and a field here diverge, the vendor page settles it.

GateTrue is a record of what vendors have written about marking. Nothing here judges a product against a rule, and nothing here is a legal opinion.

6How the register is laid out

The register sections hold one standard of evidence: a generator's own published pages, with the address and the reading date on every row. The explainers carry no new claims.

• Generators — A page for every generator on the register…
• Fields — A page for each column on the marking register…
• Implementers — Entries for marking systems that sit outside the plan table…
• Questions — Questions about watermarking answered strictly from what generators publish on their own…
• Learn — Short explainers on the two distinctions that underpin the register…
• Data — Every field recorded about watermarking, as a comma-separated file with the source page…
• Marking rankings — A ranking of AI video generators by how many of four output-marking points their own pages…
• Marked output — Four pages on the names people search beside this register…
• Readings — A page for each register cell whose evidence is worth setting out…
• Side by side — Pairs of generators that answer one register column in opposite ways, with both vendors'…
• Findings — Questions answered by counting rows…
• Terms — Short definitions of the words this register uses narrowly…
• Source documents — The register by genre of source…
• Clear marking rules — AI video generators ranked by four output-marking points their own pages state