I tried the best AI image detectors so that you don’t need to.
Here are the top picks:
Not convinced yet?
Let me show you how these tools work and what kinds of results I got from them.
I spent over $100 testing them so that you don’t need to.
Disclaimer: This article is reader-supported. If you choose to pay for the tools listed in this article, I might earn a small commission at no cost to you.
1. Aidetector.com — AI Image Detector
Aidetector.com is my favorite AI image detector tool out there. It also spots AI in text.
The tool is easy to use. Just drag and drop images to the view, and it will let you know if the image is AI-generated or not.
Let me share my results.
Here are the two real images I used this tool on:
The AI got both correct! That’s impressive.
Here are the two AI-generated images I tried with this model:
Awesome!
The AI got both of these right, too — despite them being generated with the newest OpenAI o4 model, which makes those look more realistic than before.
2. Winston AI
The next AI image detector on the list is Winston AI.
This is a complete AI detector platform. One of the main features is the AI image detector that I will show you today.
To use it, just sign up to the app. After signing up, you’ll see a view that looks like this:
This is where you can choose between text detection and image detection.
Upload images, and Winston AI will try to tell if they were generated by tools like Midjourney or DALL·E.
It doesn’t just look at resolution or metadata — it scans for visual patterns common in AI-generated visuals.
Here the AI told me that my image is 95% human, which it indeed is (as it’s a real photograph).
That gave it almost a 100% human score, which is indeed what this is.
Here’s another image that I tested:
This time, the AI gave it a 100% AI score, which is true. The image is entirely AI-generated.
Here’s one more AI-generated image that I ran through Winston AI image detector:
Once again, it suggests this is mostly AI. Notice, however, that the Human score is 11%.
This can be misleading, and with some images, you might see a human score higher than that, even though the image was fully AI-generated.
Don’t forget to check the Winston integrations.
For example, if you’re interested in trying the text detector, you can just download the Chrome Extension and scan any content on any page without jumping between windows.
Isn’t that handy?
👉 Try Winston AI Detector Free
3. SightEngine — AI Image Detector
Sight Engine is an AI detector platform that allows you to spot AI in media and writing.
I tested it on my real images:
It got both correct.
Only a 1% chance that those are AI-generated. In other words, this tool is very confident that the images are real, which they are!
Then I tried it with the AI images that I had just generated:
Once again, the AI got it right. It’s 99% sure that those are AI-generated images, which they indeed are!
However, I had some trouble using the tool.
At first, I thought it was free because it let me do a free detection first.
Then I had to sign up to use more. And as I did, it didn’t let me detect more images. However, I was able to bypass that by opening up Chrome in Incognito mode and visiting the site again.
The reason this happens is that the tool is not for business-to-customer use. Instead, it’s an API that developers can use to add AI detectors to their apps, etc.
So if you try this, just keep in mind that it’s meant for developers.
But anyway, this AI detector seems to work nicely.
4. WasItAI — AI Image Detector
WasItAI is a fast, easy tool to tell if an image was AI-generated.
Upload a photo, get instant results, and spot fakes in seconds.
Here are the results I got for my 4 sample images.
Here are the real images:
The tool got both of those right. Both are real images—just as the tool suggests.
Let’s try it on the AI-generated photos, too:
The tool got both of those right here as well. Both are AI-generated images — just as the tool suggests.
That’s epic!
This tool is also an API, which means it allows you to add these features to your own projects. So, if you’re a developer, you might want to give this a try.
5. HiveModeration — AI Image Detector
HiveModeration is an AI platform that detects and filters harmful content like violence, nudity, hate speech, or spam. It works across images, videos, and text to keep platforms safe.
There’s a free AI image detector you can use on their site. However, this one seems to be a bit slower than the other tools on the list. But on the other hand, it seems to be more accurate as well. Where the other tools gave percentages like 99% confidence, this one gives 99.9%.
I first tested it with my free images:
It nailed both. They both are real images, and the AI knew it too.
Then I also gave it the AI-generated photos to see if it catches them too:
This is also an API. If you’re a developer and want to incorporate an AI image detector in your project, you can try this tool!
6. IsItAI — AI Image Detector
Spoiler: It did not even work…
Then, I found another free tool called IsItAI. This looked promising on the surface, but when I first tested the tool, it refused to give me any kind of results.
Here’s the view where you can drop your image:
Once you upload the image, it starts to process…
Then, after about 10 seconds, the view will just disappear.
I even tried to pause the Ad Blocker, but still no results.
If you decide to try it, let me know if it works. For now, I have to place it at the bottom of the list because it simply didn’t work.
To Take Home
Pick any of the working AI detectors on the list.
HiveModeration was accurate but a bit slower than the others on the list.
Also, the first tool, Aidetector.com, crashed a couple of times, but the team told me to fix it asap.
I don’t know if all these tools use the same underlying technology, but they seemed to perform pretty identically. All of them gave a similar confidence score and took a similar time to run the analysis. That being said, calling one a winner over the other is a bit trickier.
If you want me to do a more complete analysis on the AI image detectors, feel free to let me know in the comments.