Does Midjourney add a watermark or metadata to its images?
Midjourney says every image it delivers has a small ID tag hidden inside the file, and that its own verification page reads it. Midjourney also says the tag is easily lost: screenshots, edits and most social media sites remove it. Our checker does not read this tag, so it cannot confirm or deny it.
What does Midjourney say it adds to its images?
Midjourney's help page on Content Authenticity says that every image Midjourney delivers has a small ID tag hidden inside the file. It says the checker looks for that tag and confirms it points to a real Midjourney image. It also says a tag that was faked or copied from another image will not pass.
The page does not say what format the tag uses. It does not call the tag Content Credentials, C2PA or IPTC, so we do not either. We also found no mention of a visible watermark on that page or on Midjourney's verification page. The pages do not say when Midjourney began adding the tag.
How does Midjourney's verification page work?
Midjourney's image and video verification page asks you to upload a file and says it checks the information Midjourney embeds in what it serves. It says the file is only inspected, never stored, and it lists PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF, TIFF, MP4, MOV and WebM files up to 20MB. The help page adds that the check is free, needs no account, and has a daily limit.
It opens another company's site, and your file goes to them, not to us. Midjourney's help page names three answers.
| Answer | What Midjourney says it means |
|---|---|
| The image was created with Midjourney | The tag is there and it is real. |
| The metadata does not check out | The file has a tag, but it does not point to any real Midjourney image. Midjourney says someone may have tampered with it. |
| No Midjourney metadata found | There is no tag in the file. Midjourney says that does not mean it did not make the image. |
How easily is the tag lost?
Midjourney says easily. Its help page lists screenshots, edits and most social media sites as things that remove the tag, and advises checking the original downloaded file, not a screenshot or a copy from social media.
The verification page adds that editing, cropping, re-encoding, screenshots and some platforms may remove these markers. It also says files created before Midjourney began adding them never carried a marker at all. That means a missing tag has several possible causes, and none of them is visible from the result alone.
Does a positive result prove Midjourney made the file?
Midjourney's two pages describe this differently, and both are worth knowing. The help page says a faked or copied tag will not pass. The verification page says a positive result is not proof that the file was made by Midjourney, because metadata can be copied from one file into another and a marker can be copied or fabricated.
Both statements are Midjourney's own. Read together, they mean a positive answer is the maker's own finding, not proof, and a negative answer does not settle the question either way.
What did we find in files filed under Midjourney?
We hold two real files filed in the Wikimedia Commons category "Images generated by Midjourney". Third parties uploaded them, and we cannot know how each file was handled before upload, so they show what our checker reads in files we hold, not what Midjourney does.
Both files read "No supported provenance signals found". Neither carries a Content Credentials record, and the checker found no XMP, EXIF, IPTC or text metadata in either. The checks for the Stable Diffusion watermark, metadata and Content Credentials all ran on both. We measured this on October 30, 2026, and the counts are on our accuracy page.
Our checker does not read Midjourney's hidden tag. These results therefore cannot say whether either file carried one. They only say that nothing our checker supports was present.
Does a claim attached to a Midjourney picture mean anything?
We tested one more case. We took one of those two files and attached a signed record made with a self-made certificate. The certificate names "Leica Camera AG", and the record declares a camera capture and a generator called "Leica M11". Our checker reads it as "Content Credentials found; signer trust not established".
The detail under that headline says the signing certificate names Leica Camera AG, that it is on neither trust list, and that anyone can make a certificate with any name. It also says the image matches the record. The record matched the image and the name was still not vouched for. A record attached to a picture is only a claim until a trust list vouches for its signer. This is a result about our checker and a file we made, not about Midjourney or Leica.
What this means when you check an image
Open the checker, choose the file, and look for the headline "No supported provenance signals found". It means we found no signed record, no source label in the metadata and no Stable Diffusion watermark pattern. The line under it says this does not mean the image is real or human-made.
For a file you think came from Midjourney, that headline does not rule Midjourney in or out, because we do not read its tag. The checker's own limits line applies: these checks cannot determine whether an image is AI-generated.
One option is Midjourney's own verification page. It opens another company's site, and your image is uploaded to them, not to us. Midjourney advises checking the original downloaded file, because it says screenshots and most social media sites remove the tag. Our Privacy and method page explains what our own checker does with your file.
Guides on this topic
- How to tell if an image is AI is the main page on this topic.
- Which AI image generators add watermarks? compares what each maker says it adds.
- Can Content Credentials be faked? explains why a record with a name on it is not proof.
- Can EXIF data be faked? covers unsigned metadata.
- Why AI image detectors disagree explains why checks can give different answers.
Frequently asked questions
- Does Midjourney put a visible watermark on its images?
- We found no mention of one on the two Midjourney pages we read. What Midjourney describes is a small ID tag hidden inside the file.
- Is Midjourney's tag the same as Content Credentials?
- Midjourney's pages do not say so. They describe an ID tag read by Midjourney's own checker, and we do not call it Content Credentials or IPTC.
- Does our checker read Midjourney's tag?
- No. We do not check it. Use Midjourney's verification page for that, and remember that your image goes to them.
- If Midjourney's check finds no tag, was the image made elsewhere?
- Not necessarily. Midjourney says the tag is easily lost, and that files made before it began adding markers never had one.