Google Researchers Made An Algorithm To Delete Watermarks From Photos (venturebeat.com)

"Researchers at Google have found a vulnerability in the way watermarks are used by stock imagery sites like Adobe Stock that makes it possible to remove the opaque stamp used to protect copyright," writes Khari Johnson via VentureBeat. "The consistent nature in which the watermarks are placed on photos can be exploited using an algorithm trained to recognize and automatically remove watermarks." From the report: Changing the position or opacity of a watermark do not impact the algorithm's ability to remove watermarks from images with copyright protection. Randomization, the researchers say, is required to keep images from being stolen. In results presented at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference last month, subtle modifications to each watermark can make it harder to remove watermarks. With these warped watermarks, attempts to get rid of watermarks with an algorithm or photo editing software leaves noticeable marks, rendering an image useless. "As often done with vulnerabilities discovered in operating systems, applications or protocols, we want to disclose this vulnerability and propose solutions in order to help the photography and stock image communities adapt and better protect its copyrighted content and creations," research scientists Tali Dekel and Michael Rubenstein wrote in a blog post today. "From our experiments much of the world's stock imagery is currently susceptible to this circumvention." You can learn more about the different types of randomization that can be done to combat watermark removal and see more example images in Google's blog post. The full report and research is available via the project's GitHub page.

Comments

Sounds like protection money to me

[holophrastic]

So, decades gone by, and I've never heard anyone complain about watermarks being ineffective. Google uses enormous resources to crack watermarking, and here's betting they invent watermark 2.0 next week.

Here, pay me protection money, and I won't destroy your retail store.

By the way, serial numbers can be filed off of guns and car parts too. The watermarks were never meant to be perfect -- in fact, it was always easy for a graphic artist to manually remove them -- about ten minutes. But it made obvious that you were crossing the line in doing so.

Re:Something Useful

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Google... stop making my job of stealing someone else's IP more difficult! :)