watermark
Meta built an AI detection tool to ID images and video created with its new models
It has rate limits for some reason. Meta is working on a tool to ID images and video created with its new image generation model, Muse Image. The company showed off a preview of the web-based tool that can check for the invisible watermarks used by the new model. This watermarking system, called Content Seal, remains in place even when cropped, compressed, resized, or screenshotted, Meta explains in a blog post . We're previewing a detection tool that lets you check whether an image carries a Content Seal watermark, providing an initial way to help you better understand if an image was made with Meta AI.
Sample Complexities of Estimating Gumbel--Max Watermark Proportions with and without Reduction to Pivotal Statistics
Watermarking promises a statistical trace of large language model (LLM) use, but real documents, after editing or paraphrasing, rarely arrive as purely human-written or purely machine-generated. This motivates a quantitative question beyond detection: what proportion of a document is generated from a pre-specified watermarked LLM? We study this watermark proportion estimation problem under the Gumbel--max watermarking mechanism, treating the next-token prediction (NTP) distributions as unknown and arbitrary nuisance parameters subject to a non-degeneracy condition. We compare two observation regimes: in the full observation regime, the estimator observes the pseudorandom vector and the selected token at each position; under the more popular setting of pivotal reduction, it observes only a scalar pivot, which follows a one-dimensional Uniform--Beta mixture distribution. Under pivotal reduction, we develop a Laguerre-polynomial estimator and establish a matching information-theoretic lower bound for the sample complexity. For full observation, we introduce an event-counting estimator and show a matching lower bound, yielding a substantially smaller sample complexity. As our results imply, although reducing to pivotal statistics is an elegant and widely used procedure, it is not always sample-efficient for estimating the proportion of watermarks.
Provable Watermarking for Data Poisoning Attacks
In recent years, data poisoning attacks have been increasingly designed to appear harmless and even beneficial, often with the intention of verifying dataset ownership or safeguarding private data from unauthorized use. However, these developments have the potential to cause misunderstandings and conflicts, as data poisoning has traditionally been regarded as a security threat to machine learning systems. To address this issue, it is imperative for harmless poisoning generators to claim ownership of their generated datasets, enabling users to identify potential poisoning to prevent misuse. In this paper, we propose the deployment of watermarking schemes as a solution to this challenge. We introduce two provable and practical watermarking approaches for data poisoning: post-poisoning watermarking and poisoning-concurrent watermarking. Our analyses demonstrate that when the watermarking length is ฮ( d/ฯตw)for post-poisoning watermarking, and falls within the range of ฮ(1/ฯต2w)to O( d/ฯตp)for poisoning-concurrent watermarking, the watermarked poisoning dataset provably ensures both watermarking detectability and poisoning utility, certifying the practicality of watermarking under data poisoning attacks.
Steering Personalized Multilingual with Sparse
Watermarking LLM-generated text is critical for content attribution and misinformation prevention, yet existing methods compromise text quality and require white-box model access with logit manipulation or training, which exclude APIbased models and multilingual scenarios. We propose SAEMARK, an inferencetime framework for multi-bit watermarking that embeds personalized information through feature-based rejection sampling, fundamentally different from logit-based or rewriting-based approaches: we do not modify model outputs directly and require only black-box access, while naturally supporting multi-bit message embedding and generalizing across diverse languages and domains. We instantiate the framework using Sparse Autoencoders as deterministic feature extractors and provide theoretical worst-case analysis relating watermark accuracy to computational budget. Experiments across 4 datasets demonstrate strong watermarking performance on English, Chinese, and code while preserving text quality. SAEMARK establishes a new paradigm for scalable, quality-preserving watermarks that work seamlessly with closed-source LLMs across languages and domains.
WatermarkCover ImageWatermarked ImageExtracted WatermarkLPIPS = 0.934 PSNR = 15.93 PSNR = 23.36LPIPS = 0.556 PSNR = 33.12 PSNR = 31.16
Despite its popularity in image synthesis, invisible generative watermarking remains largely underexplored in video generation. To address this gap, we propose Safe-Sora, the first framework to embed graphical watermarks directly into the video generation process. Motivated by the observation that watermarking performance is closely tied to the visual similarity between the watermark and cover content, we introduce a hierarchical coarse-to-fine adaptive matching mechanism. Specifically, the watermark image is divided into patches, each assigned to the most visually similar video frame, and further localized to the optimal spatial region for seamless embedding. To enable spatiotemporal fusion of watermark patches across video frames, we develop a 3D wavelet transform-enhanced Mamba architecture with a novel spatiotemporal local scanning strategy, effectively modeling long-range dependencies during watermark embedding and retrieval. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to apply state space models to watermarking, opening new avenues for efficient and robust watermark protection. Extensive experiments demonstrate that Safe-Sora achieves state-of-the-art performance in terms of video quality, watermark fidelity, and robustness, which is largely attributed to our proposals.
Shallow Diffuse: Robust and Invisible Watermarking through Low-Dim Subspaces in Diffusion Models
Watermarking is a crucial technique for identifying these AI-generated images and preventing their misuse. In this paper, we introduce Shallow Diffuse, a new watermarking technique that embeds robust and invisible watermarks into diffusion model outputs. Unlike existing approaches that integrate watermarking throughout the entire diffusion sampling process, Shallow Diffuse decouples these steps by leveraging the presence of a low-dimensional subspace in the image generation process. This method ensures that a substantial portion of the watermark lies in the null space of this subspace, effectively separating it from the image generation process. Our theoretical and empirical analyses show that this decoupling strategy greatly enhances the consistency of data generation and the detectability of the watermark. Extensive experiments further validate that Shallow Diffuse outperforms existing watermarking methods in terms of consistency.
Mask Image Watermarking
MaskWM has two variants: (1) MaskWM-D, which supports global watermark embedding, watermark localization, and local watermark extraction for applications such as tamper detection; (2) MaskWM-ED, which focuses on local watermark embedding and extraction, offering enhanced robustness in small regions to support fine-grined image protection. MaskWM-D builds on the classical encoder-distortion layer-decoder training paradigm. In MaskWM-D, we introduce a simple masking mechanism during the decoding stage that enables both global and local watermark extraction. During training, the decoder is guided by various types of masks applied to watermarked images before extraction, helping it learn to localize watermarks and extract them from the corresponding local areas. MaskWM-ED extends this design by incorporating the mask into the encoding stage as well, guiding the encoder to embed the watermark in designated local regions, which improves robustness under regional attacks.
TimeWak: Temporal Chained-Hashing Watermark for Time Series Data
Synthetic time series generated by diffusion models enable sharing privacysensitive datasets, such as patients' functional MRI records. Key criteria for synthetic data include high data utility and traceability to verify the data source. Recent watermarking methods embed in homogeneous latent spaces, but state-of-the-art time series generators operate in data space, making latent-based watermarking incompatible. This creates the challenge of watermarking directly in data space while handling feature heterogeneity and temporal dependencies. We propose TimeWak, the first watermarking algorithm for multivariate time series diffusion models.
Learning to Watermark: ASelective Watermarking Framework for Large Language Models via Multi-Objective Optimization
The rapid development of LLMs has raised concerns about their potential misuse, leading to various watermarking schemes that typically offer high detectability. However, existing watermarking techniques often face trade-off between watermark detectability and generated text quality. In this paper, we introduce Learning to Watermark (LTW), a novel selective watermarking framework that leverages multi-objective optimization to effectively balance these competing goals. LTW features a lightweight network that adaptively decides when to apply the watermark by analyzing sentence embeddings, token entropy, and current watermarking ratio. Training of the network involves two specifically constructed loss functions that guide the model toward Pareto-optimal solutions, thereby harmonizing watermark detectability and text quality. By integrating LTW with two baseline watermarking methods, our experimental evaluations demonstrate that LTW significantly enhances text quality without compromising detectability. Our selective watermarking approach offers a new perspective for designing watermarks for LLMs and a way to preserve high text quality for watermarks.