Hide&Seek: Remove Image Watermarks with Negligible Cost via Pixel-wise Reconstruction

TL;DR

This paper introduces HIDE&SEEK, a set of efficient attacks that can effectively remove watermarks from images with minimal visual quality loss, highlighting the vulnerabilities of current watermarking defenses.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel, versatile attack suite that challenges the robustness of existing image watermarking methods with negligible computational cost.

Findings

HIDE&SEEK reliably removes watermarks from images.

The attacks maintain high visual fidelity post-removal.

Current watermarking defenses are vulnerable to these attacks.

Abstract

Watermarking has emerged as a key defense against the misuse of machine-generated images (MGIs). Yet the robustness of these protections remains underexplored. To reveal the limits of SOTA proactive image watermarking defenses, we propose HIDE&SEEK (HS), a suite of versatile and cost-effective attacks that reliably remove embedded watermarks while preserving high visual fidelity.