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OpenAI Adopts Google's SynthID Watermark for AI Images with Verification Tool

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171–180 of 198 posts

Re: OpenAI Adopts Google's SynthID Watermark for AI Images with Verification Tool

#171

if you tell it to generate the AI image with a black background you can visually see the synthid with a good enough monitor, it's just a repeating fuzzy pattern, nothing special. I have found great success of getting rid of it by masking every 2nd pixel, regenerating missing pixels and then once again masking every 2nd pixel offset by 1. Used an off the shelf model to fill in the pixels, but I also exported a depthma…

Interestingly, using AI Studio with the gemini-2.5-flash-image model and asking it to generate a "completely black image" fails with the message "Image recitation block," which has zero hits in Google.

Re: OpenAI Adopts Google's SynthID Watermark for AI Images with Verification Tool

#172
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How confident are you that the verification tool detects all of the watermark, and not just one layer? I would layer two watermarks and let the public remove the most visible one.

What good does a totally imaginary AI watermark that'll never be revealed to the public even do?

It's to mark the images for exclusion during training.

Re: OpenAI Adopts Google's SynthID Watermark for AI Images with Verification Tool

#173
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These systems should be removed. This is antithetical to freedom and privacy. There should be no way for anyone to track down who posted a political meme, anti-religious message, or any other legally protected speech. This will come back to bite us in the ass if we keep building it. Soon every image or communication we make will be watermarked if we continue to let this shit seep into the commons. Everything from you…

If the watermark is anonymous with respect to the person who created it, I do not see a threat to privacy.

> If the watermark is anonymous

when capability exists, there is no way to ensure it won't be exploited at some point in the future.

people are building software to kill other people, do you think they won't update the system to make it identifiable?

Re: OpenAI Adopts Google's SynthID Watermark for AI Images with Verification Tool

#174

This is just performative nonsense. As someone that creates things with tools with different media I would just hard avoid this tool that adds... arbitrary metadata not of my choosing. Should I seriously make a texture for a videogame with this weird DRM glorp in it? How old is photoshop and why is it exempt?

NO OFFENSE - I think this is genuinely worth digging down that: - you identify as an artist of sorts, - you can't tell AI from human images, and - you sound absolutely pissed off by this. In my personal experience watching online flamewars, there seem to be two types of people when it comes to AI, even among highly tech literate, which are: - those who can tell that an image was AI generated, instantly, even at thumb…

Idk, wasn't there a survey by Scott Alexander or Aella or something which showed that people aren't reliably able to distinguish AI generated images from human paintings? Not that some people suck at it, but that it's not really possible in any statistically significant way, with a curated set of images.

ie. you would fail too.

Re: OpenAI Adopts Google's SynthID Watermark for AI Images with Verification Tool

#175
post #122

if you tell it to generate the AI image with a black background you can visually see the synthid with a good enough monitor, it's just a repeating fuzzy pattern, nothing special. I have found great success of getting rid of it by masking every 2nd pixel, regenerating missing pixels and then once again masking every 2nd pixel offset by 1. Used an off the shelf model to fill in the pixels, but I also exported a depthma…

It’s definitely hackable, Some of our engineers worked on this long time ago https://deepwalker.xyz/blog/bypassing-synthid-in-gemini-phot...

I'm shocked that someone would write a blog post like this in which they openly admit to something that is widely understood to be fraud. Even if I'm sympathetic to why this individual chose to do this, and the technical side is interesting, I think the decision to just publicly tell a story in which you criminally defraud the villain is not a choice I'd ever make.

Re: OpenAI Adopts Google's SynthID Watermark for AI Images with Verification Tool

#176
post #171

if you tell it to generate the AI image with a black background you can visually see the synthid with a good enough monitor, it's just a repeating fuzzy pattern, nothing special. I have found great success of getting rid of it by masking every 2nd pixel, regenerating missing pixels and then once again masking every 2nd pixel offset by 1. Used an off the shelf model to fill in the pixels, but I also exported a depthma…

Interestingly, using AI Studio with the gemini-2.5-flash-image model and asking it to generate a "completely black image" fails with the message "Image recitation block," which has zero hits in Google.

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI Adopts Google's SynthID Watermark for AI Images with Verification Tool

#177
post #171

if you tell it to generate the AI image with a black background you can visually see the synthid with a good enough monitor, it's just a repeating fuzzy pattern, nothing special. I have found great success of getting rid of it by masking every 2nd pixel, regenerating missing pixels and then once again masking every 2nd pixel offset by 1. Used an off the shelf model to fill in the pixels, but I also exported a depthma…

Interestingly, using AI Studio with the gemini-2.5-flash-image model and asking it to generate a "completely black image" fails with the message "Image recitation block," which has zero hits in Google.

"image recitation block" means they are blocking generation of images that already exist in their database (training data).

Re: OpenAI Adopts Google's SynthID Watermark for AI Images with Verification Tool

#178
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NO OFFENSE - I think this is genuinely worth digging down that: - you identify as an artist of sorts, - you can't tell AI from human images, and - you sound absolutely pissed off by this. In my personal experience watching online flamewars, there seem to be two types of people when it comes to AI, even among highly tech literate, which are: - those who can tell that an image was AI generated, instantly, even at thumb…

Idk, wasn't there a survey by Scott Alexander or Aella or something which showed that people aren't reliably able to distinguish AI generated images from human paintings? Not that some people suck at it, but that it's not really possible in any statistically significant way, with a curated set of images. ie. you would fail too.

That[1] used a hand picked set of ambiguous images and still got 60% overall accuracy across 11k participants. I don't know much about statistics[2], but 1) 60% HAS to be statistically significant, and it was 2) under ADVERSARIAL, not neutral, condition. So people can tell.

Anyways, that's besides my point. The point of mine is that, it always turn into all-caps flamewars like this, with no middle ground or third camps, and that this has to be more of a phenomenon than regular disagreements. This isn't bikeshedding. This is Spanish bullfighting centered around a piece of red cloth.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42216694

2: I just asked Gemini "is 60% accuracy over 11k participant for a test statistically significant and why", it said "yes, it is overwhelmingly statistically significant" and "completely off the charts". They said p<0.05 figure would be 50.94%.

Re: OpenAI Adopts Google's SynthID Watermark for AI Images with Verification Tool

#179
post #177
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, using AI Studio with the gemini-2.5-flash-image model and asking it to generate a "completely black image" fails with the message "Image recitation block," which has zero hits in Google.

"image recitation block" means they are blocking generation of images that already exist in their database (training data).

Just to confirm, what this means is that the training data contains one or multiple pitch black images, and their system is refusing to reproduce them verbatim?

Re: OpenAI Adopts Google's SynthID Watermark for AI Images with Verification Tool

#180

Good. Despite people saying it will be removed, I have seen no reproducible repo demonstrating it.

I agree. This thread is so negative, seeing everything black and white. 99% of the users of these tools are never going to bother trying to figure out how to remove synthId. And then for the small percentage that do bother, they would have the knowledge to usage image models that don't use watermarking in the first place.

So this is a big win IMO.

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