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MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

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Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#81

Post by fishfasell »

weberer wrote: post #24

The AI aspect of this is a red herring. The real problem is that they're secretly adding in a unique identifier into every image you create. If somebody does not like your meme, they can just send a copyright subpoena to Microsoft to instantly get your full name, address, email, phone number, and any other data associated with your Microsoft account. Just like age verification, this is another weapon in the war again…

Exactly. Forget the AI aspect, this is entirely to identify users for any purposes they deem necessary. People are ignoring the surveillance state aspect of this. Reminds me of the device id debacle they have attached to their outbounds Windows network calls

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#82

Post by ixwt »

iAMkenough wrote: post #22
ixwt wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keys could be stored in something like TPM on Camera, and could sign the image. The key could then be verified from the camera itself to prove the authenticity of the image. If we as a society deemed it necessary, the camera manufacturer could also provide a list of keys for devices they have manufactured. And an image/key could be provided, and the manufacturer could verify the authenticity that way. The TPM signing…

If I steal your camera while you're on vacation, do I then gain proof of ownership of your photos? If I need to reset TPM, how do I reclaim photos I took previously?

The point of the key (as the for some reason dead comment points out), is not to prove who took the photo, but what device took the photo. Just as if someone stole a hardware token with a PGP key on could impersonate the owner. The key itself doesn't prove a person, just a device.

If a key was reset, a revocation of the original key could be issued, showing that the key was associated with the device for this particular time span. And then the new key registered.

This is ripe for abuse though, so resetting a TPM might not be accepted for this use case. I'm not certain in which case you'd want to reset a TPM for this use case though. Unless you took enough photos with the device to risk a birthday attack if you were using something like ECDSA.

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#83

Post by BeetleB »

sixothree wrote: post #6

I think it would be nice if all cameras digitally signed pictures. You could prove the photo was real.

How exactly would this work?

People take RAW photos. Load it up in a RAW editing tool. Manipulate it. Then load it in Gimp. Manipulate some more.

Will the final result have the signature?

And if it does, what use would it be?

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#84

Post by [deleted] »

arjie wrote: post #19
WalterGR wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would prevent someone from applying the same algorithm on a computer to sign arbitrary images?

Presumably the OP is proposing something like a TPM attached to the image sensor that signs the sensor output or something like that. You can’t sign it because you can’t get the key out. The key could be per-camera and be a published list. I suppose a dedicated fraudster could still stage an appropriate scene. An appropriately lit matte image might even suffice.

[deleted]

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#85

Post by mschuster91 »

qurren wrote: post #30
weberer wrote: post #24

The AI aspect of this is a red herring. The real problem is that they're secretly adding in a unique identifier into every image you create. If somebody does not like your meme, they can just send a copyright subpoena to Microsoft to instantly get your full name, address, email, phone number, and any other data associated with your Microsoft account. Just like age verification, this is another weapon in the war again…

> address Do not tell Microsoft where you sleep. IANAL but they are not a government or financial institution and do not have a right to that information. Make sure you register mailing addresses with your credit card institutions in addition to your residential addresses, and make your mailing address your billing address so that you aren't forced to tell a thousand businesses like Microsoft where you sleep.

> IANAL but they are not a government or financial institution and do not have a right to that information.

As soon as you purchase something from Microsoft - e.g. your Office 365 subscription - they have at the very least your billing address on file for the credit card.

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#86

Post by themaninthedark »

refulgentis wrote: post #77
dmantis wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Article literally says it adds a guid, not a binary field indicating that the image is ai generated.

A guid isn’t a user id, if it is in this case, it’s an abuse of how guid is used, at least colloquially. I haven’t read enough to understand if it is user / machine id, I.e. only globally unique in the sense it’s a globally unique entity identifier.

Microsoft Can Track Users via a Windows Device ID https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48815196

Microsoft GDID telemetry includes full browsing and gaming history https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48787239

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#88

Post by londons_explore »

Someone1234 wrote: post #62
nemomarx wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it trigger on non AI images? The post doesn't say so at least.

It does kind of say: The GUID is coming from the moderation endpoint, which is hit when you generate a local or cloud AI image based on your prompt. If there is no prompt, there is no endpoint, and likely no GUID. Obviously Paint could have been watermarking prior to AI though, but this specific AI watermarking appears to be only that.

The fact that local ai image generation uses an online moderation API is a bit worrying too....

Why not just mod the app to not call this API?

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#89

Post by Ajedi32 »

a1o wrote: post #31
initramfs wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it shouldn't be surprising if an application called "paint.net" can determined if AI was used when connected to the internet. (I have used Paint.net more than a decade ago).

They aren’t saying that, paint.net is an open source application, Paint is the descendant of MSPaint.

Paint.net is freeware, but it is not open source.

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#90

Post by jijji »

nemomarx wrote: post #8
ComputerGuru wrote: post #2

AI-generated text warning (I submitted - but did not author - the piece), but it seems MS Paint and MS Photos add both a visible (can be turned off) and invisible (cannot be disabled and happens silently in the background with no user notice) watermarks to photos that have been AI-manipulated, even when using a local model to perform the action. It's not clear if this applies to even things like using AI-enhanced bac…

I'd like to know more about the GUID part and how easy is it so deanonymize yeah. But if it's only on ai generation and not on all images it seems easy enough to work around that part? Still better than printers doing it no matter what you're printing.

The article says that once converted to BMP all the metadata gets removed....so on linux:

convert file.jpg file.bmp; convert file.bmp file.jpg

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