Leonardo.ai AI Detection & Watermark Analysis

What is Leonardo.ai?

Leonardo.ai is an AI image generation platform specializing in game assets, character art, and creative content. Founded in 2022 and acquired by Canva in July 2024, the platform has grown to over 30 million users. Unlike general-purpose generators, Leonardo targets professional creators who need consistent, high-quality outputs for games, entertainment, and creative industries.

The platform offers multiple proprietary models, fine-tuning capabilities, and specialized tools like AI Canvas, real-time generation, and 3D texture creation.

Leonardo.ai Models

Leonardo Phoenix

The flagship model built on a custom architecture related to FLUX.1. Known for excellent prompt adherence and photorealistic quality. Since it doesn't share the common SDXL architecture, its generation patterns differ from most other models on the market.

Leonardo Kino XL

Specializes in cinematic-style images with dramatic lighting. Based on SDXL architecture, optimized for wider aspect ratios and movie-like compositions.

Leonardo Vision XL

Tailored for photorealistic outputs, particularly portraiture and scenes requiring intricate details. Best results with longer, descriptive prompts.

Leonardo Diffusion XL

Versatile general-purpose model that works well even with concise prompts. Suitable for a broad range of styles and subjects.

Leonardo Lightning XL

Speed-optimized model for rapid iteration. Maximizes creative throughput per token while maintaining quality sufficient for ideation and prototyping.

Alchemy

Leonardo's premium rendering pipeline that increases resolution (1.75x), contrast, and lighting fidelity. Works with all XL models and costs more tokens per image.

Leonardo.ai and Watermarks

Visible Watermark

Leonardo.ai adds a visible "Generated by Leonardo AI" watermark to images on the free plan only. All paid plans (Apprentice, Artisan, Maestro) produce images without visible watermarks. There's also an optional "auto-branding" feature that can be toggled on or off.

No SynthID

Leonardo.ai does not use Google's SynthID watermarking. SynthID is exclusively deployed by Google DeepMind in Google's own services (Gemini, Imagen, Veo). Despite common search queries about "leonardo.ai synthid," there is simply no SynthID present in Leonardo-generated images.

No C2PA Content Credentials

Leonardo.ai does not embed C2PA metadata in generated images. Unlike Adobe Firefly (Content Credentials), OpenAI DALL-E/ChatGPT (C2PA metadata), or Google Gemini (SynthID + C2PA), Leonardo outputs contain no cryptographic provenance data. Standard C2PA verification tools will not identify Leonardo images as AI-generated.

No Confirmed Invisible Watermarking

As of 2025, Leonardo.ai has not publicly disclosed any invisible watermarking system embedded into generated pixels. This makes Leonardo one of the least marked AI image platforms — alongside Midjourney, which also doesn't confirm invisible watermarking.

Detecting Leonardo.ai Images

Since Leonardo has no watermarks or provenance metadata, detection relies entirely on analyzing the image content itself:

• Statistical patterns — Diffusion models produce pixel distributions that differ from real photographs
• Frequency domain analysis — AI images show distinctive patterns that cameras don't produce
• Texture and noise characteristics — The denoising process leaves subtle but consistent signatures
• Model-specific patterns — Each Leonardo model has its own generation signature based on its architecture

The choice of Leonardo model matters for detection. SDXL-based models (Kino, Vision, Diffusion, Lightning) share patterns with the broader Stable Diffusion family. The Phoenix model uses a different architecture, which means detectors trained primarily on SDXL outputs may perform differently against it.

Leonardo.ai Pricing

• Free: 150 tokens/day, visible watermark, public images, Leonardo.ai retains ownership
• Apprentice ($12/mo): 8,500 tokens, no watermark, private generations, full ownership
• Artisan ($30/mo): 25,000 tokens, unlimited relaxed generation
• Maestro ($60/mo): 60,000 tokens, concurrent jobs, priority processing

Paid subscribers have full ownership, copyright, and commercial rights to their creations. Free users get commercial usage rights but images are public and Leonardo.ai retains ownership.

Our Detection & Removal Service

Our platform tests Leonardo.ai images against multiple AI detectors simultaneously. Upload any Leonardo-generated image in the Arena to see which detectors correctly identify it and how detection rates compare across different Leonardo models. The Leaderboard tracks overall detector performance, including accuracy specifically against Leonardo outputs.