Peccavi: Visual Paraphrase Attack Safe and Distortion Free Image Watermarking Technique for AI-Generated Images

TL;DR

PECCAVI is a novel watermarking technique for AI-generated images that is resistant to visual paraphrase attacks, maintaining watermark integrity while preserving image quality and semantic content.

Contribution

It introduces the first visual paraphrase attack-safe, distortion-free image watermarking method that embeds watermarks in semantic regions and employs multi-channel frequency domain techniques.

Findings

PECCAVI effectively resists visual paraphrase attacks.

It maintains high image quality and semantic integrity.

The method is model-agnostic and open-source.

Abstract

A report by the European Union Law Enforcement Agency predicts that by 2026, up to 90 percent of online content could be synthetically generated, raising concerns among policymakers, who cautioned that "Generative AI could act as a force multiplier for political disinformation. The combined effect of generative text, images, videos, and audio may surpass the influence of any single modality." In response, California's Bill AB 3211 mandates the watermarking of AI-generated images, videos, and audio. However, concerns remain regarding the vulnerability of invisible watermarking techniques to tampering and the potential for malicious actors to bypass them entirely. Generative AI-powered de-watermarking attacks, especially the newly introduced visual paraphrase attack, have shown an ability to fully remove watermarks, resulting in a paraphrase of the original image. This paper introduces PECCAVI, the first visual paraphrase attack-safe and distortion-free image watermarking technique. In visual paraphrase attacks, an image is altered while preserving its core semantic regions, termed Non-Melting Points (NMPs). PECCAVI strategically embeds watermarks within these NMPs and employs multi-channel frequency domain watermarking. It also incorporates noisy burnishing to counter reverse-engineering efforts aimed at locating NMPs to disrupt the embedded watermark, thereby enhancing durability. PECCAVI is model-agnostic. All relevant resources and codes will be open-sourced.