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Remove-AI-Watermarks – CLI and library for removing AI watermarks from images

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Re: Remove-AI-Watermarks – CLI and library for removing AI watermarks from images

#181

Post by bawolff »

blablabla123 wrote: post #169
akersten wrote: post #7

There's an underappreciated comment in the other thread about SynthID and OpenAI [0] that captures what (IMO) the hacker ethos on this should be. We care about privacy, we should not accept tools that barcode our every digital move. (note that the counter of "well, they don't do that yet " is not particularly convincing) [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48200060

The Hacker ethos is mainly about how things work: sharing, openness. I'm not entirely sure how hiding that something is GenAI fits in here. It surely doesn't have anything to do with Privacy though.

I disagree. Its mainly about having technical control and freedom. Reverse engineering how things work feels like peak hacker ethos. You don't have control of something if you can't remove it.

I think ethical considerations were always a bit secondary to technical power when it came to so called "hacker ethos".

After all, instructions on how to remove watermarks definitely feels like the sort of thing that would have been in phrack back in the day.

Re: Remove-AI-Watermarks – CLI and library for removing AI watermarks from images

#182

Post by latexr »

bonoboTP wrote: post #176
latexr wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the umpteenth time, scale and ease of access and propagation matters. A knife and a handgun aren’t comparable to a machine gun and a bomb. When you have equal access to all of those, the damage you can enact is exponentiated. You could lie with text before, but it took effort and time and skill to do it convincingly. You could also lie with images but they took even more time and effort and skill, greatly limitin…

[flagged]

That’s a non-sequitur. This has nothing to do with “mainstream media”. Which, by the way, is not a singular entity you can blindly trust or distrust, don’t fall into that indoctrination trap. This is basic despotic citizen control: Get everyone to distrust those who hold them accountable; label them as irredeemable liars so you can do as you please.

Edit: Removed swipes while keeping the core argument.

Re: Remove-AI-Watermarks – CLI and library for removing AI watermarks from images

#183

Post by streetfighter64 »

latexr wrote: post #182
bonoboTP wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That’s a non-sequitur. This has nothing to do with “mainstream media”. Which, by the way, is not a singular entity you can blindly trust or distrust, don’t fall into that indoctrination trap. This is basic despotic citizen control: Get everyone to distrust those who hold them accountable; label them as irredeemable liars so you can do as you please. Edit: Removed swipes while keeping the core argument.

Ah yes, accusing people of being shills and bots, and "indoctrinated", the core principles of good faith arguments.

> Label them as irredeemable liars so you can do as you please.

Do you not see the irony?

Re: Remove-AI-Watermarks – CLI and library for removing AI watermarks from images

#184

Post by hurril »

digitaltrees wrote: post #125
blanched wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won the long game. Everything is rented and DRM now. Very little of what most people buy digitally is truly owned.

They didn’t win because of DRM. They won because of the regulations that grant a monopoly for a specific term in the form of a copyright. Society has recognized that incentivizing creative acts requires a temporary grant of monopoly to ensure the necessary scarcity to make money and recover the costs of creation. The real problem is Disney keeps expanding that time period so things never enter the public domain

This is again conflating at least two things and this is so prevalent in this context. Let us not conflate how annoying DRM:s are to us users that buy the things, with pirates thinking they somehow have a right to use any software without paying fairly for it. I would even go as far as to say that you pirates are the reason I have to have a DRM in the shit I bought and paid for.

Re: Remove-AI-Watermarks – CLI and library for removing AI watermarks from images

#185

Post by user3939382 »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #149
egeozcan wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO you cannot base your trust on something that is so easy to work around. Trust should be between people, not a person and some data. So showing how easy to generate "false" data, this makes it more obvious for people focus on other people. Trusting people makes life much easier in my experience, while focusing on data, again in my experience, is a game of cat and mouse.

> Trusting people makes life much easier in my experience Sure, but how do you apply that to a society at large where powerful people are interested in making everybody distrust all reliable sources of information? AI watermarks are no panacea, but at least they are a clear signal of what not to trust.

> how do you apply that to a society at large

You can’t, it’s an inherent contradiction. Human social structures have sophisticated and robust evolved mechanisms for establishing and maintaining trust. These dynamics are not one option among many, they are the optimum. By their definition they don’t scale to strangers around the planet. This is an immutable factor in why we have spam, bank fraud, etc. We want the benefits of trust without the cost of local constraints but wishing doesn’t make it so.

Re: Remove-AI-Watermarks – CLI and library for removing AI watermarks from images

#186

Post by Dongyu_Jia »

j2kun wrote: post #12
akersten wrote: post #7

There's an underappreciated comment in the other thread about SynthID and OpenAI [0] that captures what (IMO) the hacker ethos on this should be. We care about privacy, we should not accept tools that barcode our every digital move. (note that the counter of "well, they don't do that yet " is not particularly convincing) [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48200060

Building a tool that tries (and probably fails) to remove the watermark (due to the arms race that large corporate machines will win) is tacitly accepting the barcode. The hacker ethos should be, first and foremost, to run open source models locally without relying on a corporation.

[flagged]

Re: Remove-AI-Watermarks – CLI and library for removing AI watermarks from images

#187

Post by frotaur »

steve1977 wrote: post #142

I think AI watermarks are kind of a lost cause anyway. I'd be more interested in some kind of trusted Non-AI watermark. This is something that could get integrated into cameras for example. However, considering how much AI-processing we already have in "normal" photos, it will be difficult to decide where to draw the line.

That would be great, but I always wonder: how do you prevent people from photographing an AI generating image through the 'legitimizing' camera?

Re: Remove-AI-Watermarks – CLI and library for removing AI watermarks from images

#188

Post by transcriptase »

hurril wrote: post #184
digitaltrees wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn’t win because of DRM. They won because of the regulations that grant a monopoly for a specific term in the form of a copyright. Society has recognized that incentivizing creative acts requires a temporary grant of monopoly to ensure the necessary scarcity to make money and recover the costs of creation. The real problem is Disney keeps expanding that time period so things never enter the public domain

This is again conflating at least two things and this is so prevalent in this context. Let us not conflate how annoying DRM:s are to us users that buy the things, with pirates thinking they somehow have a right to use any software without paying fairly for it. I would even go as far as to say that you pirates are the reason I have to have a DRM in the shit I bought and paid for.

Piracy is as easy now as it was pre-DRM. DRM is the digital equivalent to security screws on electronics, in that they’re a mechanism for lawyers to argue their client made an attempt despite being easily bypassed with a trivial amount of effort.

Re: Remove-AI-Watermarks – CLI and library for removing AI watermarks from images

#189

Post by latexr »

streetfighter64 wrote: post #183
latexr wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a non-sequitur. This has nothing to do with “mainstream media”. Which, by the way, is not a singular entity you can blindly trust or distrust, don’t fall into that indoctrination trap. This is basic despotic citizen control: Get everyone to distrust those who hold them accountable; label them as irredeemable liars so you can do as you please. Edit: Removed swipes while keeping the core argument.

Ah yes, accusing people of being shills and bots, and "indoctrinated", the core principles of good faith arguments. > Label them as irredeemable liars so you can do as you please. Do you not see the irony?

You’re right. I should’ve done better and apologise. I have lightly edited the post above to keep the core point while removing the swipes.

I disagree with the irony point on the basis that none of us here (I assume) is a despot or in a position of power high enough to lie to the point of discrediting entire institutions to the masses. We can be victims of it, but not perpetrators. Also, nowhere have I accused anyone in particular of being a liar. Still, given that my ill chosen words will have no doubt clouded your understanding of the point—which is on me—I won’t hold that against you, I take responsibility.

Re: Remove-AI-Watermarks – CLI and library for removing AI watermarks from images

#190

Post by jpfromlondon »

blanched wrote: post #85
transcriptase wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>due to the arms race that large corporate machines will win Much like how the entirety of Hollywood, book publishers, academic publishers, and game developers have won against piracy despite being some of the largest corps on earth and dedicating untold billions to the issue over the past 30 years?

They won the long game. Everything is rented and DRM now. Very little of what most people buy digitally is truly owned.

did they? Is piracy now impossible?
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