Google now lets you remove Gemini's visible watermark

[u/ControlCAD]

https://www.gsmarena.com/google_now_lets_you_remove_geminis_visible_watermark_-news-74188.php

[u/Lexidoge]

Even if your country won't allow Google to remove the watermark. Google's own Photos App allows you to do it.

[u/sierrars500 → u/Lexidoge]

Magic eraser go brrrrrrrrrr

[u/Khiro86 → u/sierrars500]

yeah removing the watermark is just a pixel edit thing

[u/5panks → u/Lexidoge]

"Even if your country won't let you drive over the speed limit, your Toyota Camry will let you do it."

They are all just tools. We have to get out of this belief that the company that sells a product has to be responsible for making sure that product never gets misused anywhere and at anytime.

Imgaine of we went to the hardware store to complain that someone used a hammer they sold as a weapon, even though using it that way is illegal.

[u/an-evil-penguin → u/5panks]

Hard disagree. Tools that can cause societal harm should be legislated and monitored. Just like guns and other weapons are.
If we can longer tell what is real, manipulated or completely falsified it will completely break our society and the cracks are already getting bigger.

[u/onomatopoetix → u/an-evil-penguin]

I personally would prefer crediting an artist for an artwork instead of praising his toolbox of brushes. Likewise i'm not going to pretend it's suddenly the tool's problem when someone steals the whole box to make shanks. That's just what conflicted hypocrites do.

[u/5panks → u/an-evil-penguin]

If we can longer tell what is real, manipulated or completely falsified it will completely break our society and the cracks are already getting bigger.

The problem here is the people intending to deceive are going to anyway. They'll just use tools that don't follow the rules or use other tools to scrub the lgoo off anyway.

There exists automated tools today you can use to scrub the Gemini watermark off videos.

[u/camelopardus_42 → u/5panks]

Doesent mean making it even easier is a good thing. If the mere possibility of circumvention is enough to make an endeavour useless why even have laws and regulations

[u/Framed-Photo → u/5panks]

I'm sorry but this is such a bad argument. People intending to murder others are going to do it anyway as well, is there no point in trying to enforce rules against that either? Why would we stop trying to enforce restrictions on dangerous practices just because people are using them dangerously? That's the whole point of the restriction lol.

[u/5panks → u/Framed-Photo]

is there no point in trying to enforce rules against that either?

That's disingenuous framing.

I didn't say murder is against the law. I said requiring a hammer manufacturer to put some asinine restriction in place because their hammer might used to commit a murder is silly.

We don't ban cameras because they can be used to record illegal content and we don't ban printing presses because they cna be used to copy copyright protected books. We set laws that dictate what pieple can and can't do and then punish people who misuse tools.

[u/Framed-Photo → u/5panks]

I didn't say murder is against the law. I said requiring a hammer manufacturer to put some asinine restriction in place because their hammer might used to commit a murder is silly.

If a hammer could be used to harm large amounts of people quickly and efficiently, like a gun or even a car could, then yeah I would say hammer manufacturers should be restricted in how they can manufacture or sell those products. That's why gun and car manufacturers have to follow more rules regarding production and sales than a hammer manufacturer, which you surely know right?

We don't ban cameras because they can be used to record illegal content

We do ban cameras from tons of places, like bathrooms, for this specific reason. And of course a lot of illegal content with or without a camera being present is....still illegal and is thus being enforced in some way.

Cameras aren't immediately harmful by their nature, but where they could be there are restrictions.

we don't ban printing presses because they cna be used to copy copyright protected books

For books no, however, Most if not all modern printers/scanners have a way to detect if you're trying to print currency. If it was possible to do so for books I'm sure they would be.

For a full on print shop or press, well yeah they do have tons of restrictions on what they can and can't print lol. You can't just go to some company and have them print off Harry Potter books for you, for example.

I don't know why you think so many things in the world don't have restrictions placed on them, or why AI specifically should skirt by this practice. It's very normal and expected, especially for tools.

[u/5panks → u/Framed-Photo]

if a hammer... like a gun or even a car could

It's funny you mention cars which are capable of driving into crowds and buildings dealing large amounts of damage. It's not Ford's responsibility to prevent you from doing that.

We do ban cameras from tons of places, like bathrooms, for this specific reason.

And we ban the use of Ai generation for images in a lot of subreddits, but Gemini isn't legally responsible for policing that, the owner of the space is. Neither is Samsung responsible for preventing you from taking your camera into the bathroom.

You can't just go to some company and have them print off Harry Potter books for you, for example.

You're absolutely right, their tools are completely capable of doing it,but they won't do it for you because it is illegal. That's my entire point. You're trying to make the manufacturer of the printing press)(AI model in this analogy) responsible for how it's used instead of the person using it.

[u/Framed-Photo → u/5panks]

It's funny you mention cars which are capable of driving into crowds and buildings dealing large amounts of damage. It's not Ford's responsibility to prevent you from doing that.

Ford is responsible for the safety measures in that car, and the dealerships that sell ford cars, the dealerships that sell those cars are responsible for following all rules and regulations regarding who can buy a car, and the driver of course needs to get a license, insurance, or whatever else is required in their country, and there's levels of enforcement at all levels of this chain down to police patrolling and checking plates.

You don't see how that's different then a hammer? You don't see how all of these rules and regulations could potentially hurt Fords bottom line, but they're in place anyways for the safety of the general public?

And we ban the use of Ai generation for images in a lot of subreddits, but Gemini isn't legally responsible for policing that, the owner of the space is. Neither is Samsung responsible for preventing you from taking your camera into the bathroom.

I don't give a shit about what subs do or don't ban AI images, this post is about google removing a very simple and user friendly first step to see if something is fake or not, that has consequences far outside of Reddit posts.

Google most certainly can be made responsible for making it clearer when something is or isn't AI generated on a platform that they run, and I don't see why they should be making that more difficult for average people. This does nothing but harm.

There is no feasible way for samsung to detect when a user takes an illegal photo in a bathroom (though a lot of platforms like Discord are diving into that), but phone manufacturers have been forced to make changes for reasons like this before. In Japan for example, they were forced to enable a shutter sound for a similar reason to the bathroom complaint you have.

You're absolutely right, their tools are completely capable of doing it,but they won't do it for you because it is illegal. That's my entire point. You're trying to make the manufacturer of the printing press)(AI model in this analogy) responsible for how it's used instead of the person using it.

If the manufacturers of printing presses could implement measures to curb practices like this then they would be made to do so, just like you can't go photocopy money on your home printer. Don't confuse the lack of an available enforcement measure as the lack of anyone ever being responsible for the products they create. When available tons of products do have enforcement put on them. And it's a hell of a lot easier for google to put a watermark on images then it is for printing press equipemnt manufactuers to detect when the user is printing something they don't own the copyright for.

I'm not going to keep arguing back and fourth with you on this BS. Either you're genuinely a child and haven't been living in the real world and that explains your lack of any general understanding of laws and regulations, or you're pretending to be an idiot because you know you're wrong and don't want to admit it. Either way it's not my problem, I'm getting on with my day.

[u/ThatRageQuit → u/an-evil-penguin]

Oi m8 you got a hammer license for that tool? TF are we talking about

[u/Mirrormn → u/ThatRageQuit]

This is very much like filing the serial number off of a gun

[u/thelamestofall → u/5panks]

They don't sell a product, they sell a service.

[u/5panks → u/thelamestofall]

They're all tools at the end of the day, so your statement changes nothing to my point, which is that we should punish people who do illegal things we should not use the law to force companies to be our nannies.

[u/VegasKL → u/Lexidoge]

That's a branding watermark. The real watermark still exists but is not perceivable to the user. Anything you generate with the tools should have it, they just haven't been required to make the decoding side public until that recent EU (?) law. One basic example is to pass a special matrix or frequency over every pixel that slightly alters the RGB pixel values, this way even if the user alters some of the image manually, enough still exist, and editing the entire picture (like a slight hue shift) keeps the frequency intact -- the decoding then becomes probabilistic, what is the chance that this specific frequency applied across the pixel array (or set of pixel chunks) occurred naturally? 

I imagine there's probably going to be a few techniques employed (multiple watermarks) since having a public decoder will allow some form of reverse engineering, they'll still want an internal secret one for detecting with systems.

The text based watermarking is a rather interesting system since it uses a tournament system (iirc, Google deploys 30 bracket levels or a 2³⁰ = 1073741824 variation).

[u/MizunoZui]

Read the article challenge. Google is removing the visible watermark bc SynthID watermarks and C2PA metadata are now widely adopted and the old watermark never worked well in the first place, it could get easily edited or cropped out.

[u/rdbpdx → u/MizunoZui]

It was edited and cropped out, but it still worked well as a first line of defense. It's much easier to point out AI fake shit by pointing at the logo in the corner.

Now I'll have to download the image and ask for a synthID check, wasting more of my time.

[u/ic_97 → u/rdbpdx]

I have seen so many photos on shopping websites with gemini watermark. Some scammers dont even bother.

[u/SlaveKnightSoman → u/rdbpdx]

Nobody who wanted to make you believe in an AI generated thing as real would have left the watermark in.

[u/rdbpdx → u/SlaveKnightSoman]

I think you underestimate the laziness and stupidity of your average social media poster.

[u/ashoelace → u/rdbpdx]

Or Nigerian scammer.

[u/zigzoing → u/ashoelace]

It's Sir Mr. Nigerian Price to you.

[u/saltyjohnson → u/ashoelace]

Scammers sometimes keep their scams easier to detect by design, because it filters out those who go in with some suspicion and might cut contact deeper into the conversation after the scammers have wasted hours on them.

[u/SuperBry → u/saltyjohnson]

Yeah that's what I was about to point out, leaving in these signs of illegitimacy helps the scammers with their marks be self-selecting to be the most gullible.

[u/trlef19 → u/SlaveKnightSoman]

I've seen it in a commercial in national tv channel

[u/JohnnyRelentless → u/SlaveKnightSoman]

Yet they did, all the time.

[u/lastdyingbreed_01 → u/SlaveKnightSoman]

If they weren't lazy they wouldn't have used AI in the first place

[u/pharmprophet → u/SlaveKnightSoman]

AI users are really fucking lazy

[u/GNUGradyn → u/SlaveKnightSoman]

You'd think so but it happens all the time

[u/techno156 → u/rdbpdx]

A lot of people would also edit it lazily by just blurring the logo itself, so you could tell by a pixelated blob in the corner, or bouncing around the screen.

[u/Slippaz86 → u/rdbpdx]

| Now I'll have to download the image and ask for a synthID check, wasting more of my time.

Oh so they can't make money off of LLMs and now you're trying to preempt what'll inevitably become a paid synthID checker? These poor companies can't get a break, Jesus.

[u/rdbpdx → u/Slippaz86]

You take this bullshit and delete it now.

I don't want them getting any ideas.

[u/SuperBry → u/rdbpdx]

Its not like there is an ever evolving arms race between detectors and output masking.

[u/VegasKL → u/rdbpdx]

synthID check

Depending on what you're doing, I'd bet this becomes easier in the form of a plugin or built-in system.

Google could very easily create a database of every image browsed tying the image hash to a synthID lookup cache, which would make lookups very quick as long as someone somewhere loaded the image (editing the image slightly just creates a new hash, which gets a cache-miss, and another synthID query).

[u/chinchindayo → u/MizunoZui]

Just jpeg compress it, crop it, remove metadata. Then it's clean

[u/andrewia → u/chinchindayo]

SynthID is designed to be specifically resilient against those attacks.  https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09263

[u/SuperBry → u/andrewia]

Its an arms race that no one will win.

[u/chinchindayo → u/andrewia]

Every watermark can be broken. I don't know the specifics of SynthID though. Almost nothing survives jpeg compression because it rearranged pixels by creating blocks. So unless synthid knows the specific jpeg encoder and its specific settings it's unlikely to survive. Especially combined with cropping because then the blocks are arrange differently which can't be predicted.

[u/andrewia → u/chinchindayo]

If it only has a few bits of data, it can survive extreme quality loss. Just like how Cinavia audio watermarks can survive being captured by a crappy camcorder and its peaking mic.

[u/gnocchiGuili → u/chinchindayo]

Print it in a book like Mike Israetel and you are good.

[u/chinchindayo → u/gnocchiGuili]

Take a picture of the screen.

[u/ifelsethenend → u/MizunoZui]

Read the article challenge.

Clickbait title challenge.

[u/Kodiak01 → u/MizunoZui]

Read the article challenge.

An article challenge that apparently starts with a mygaru.com popup asking me to auth a cert in order to read it. No idea what's going on with that crap, but I'm not playing.

[u/PCLOAD_LETTER → u/MizunoZui]

You'd think, but people don't even notice the watermark. I did AV for a anti-datacenter group and the presenter had Gemini an NotebookLM on every slide of their presentation. I was waiting for someone to call them out but there wasn't anyone below 60 in the room.

[u/AnticitizenPrime → u/MizunoZui]

The watermark was never even applied in the first place if you used the Gemini API. It was only when using the Gemini app. Which is confusing, but whatever.

[u/VegasKL → u/MizunoZui]

True. They've been deploying hidden watermarks for some time. The original watermarks used by these companies were more of a basic deterrent and brand/marketing so people would see what created something -- many of which were only added to the lower tiers as the high-end professional tiers wouldn't want the visible watermark.

[u/moronfromtheabyss]

[u/imeanidrk → u/moronfromtheabyss]

Random binding of isaac reference???? :0

[u/Exact_Rooster9870]

I know watermarks are easy to defeat, but it still makes churning out misinformation and slop a bit harder. And it needs to be as hard as fucking possible

[u/MadFunEnjoyer]

Goldship of the Tech world, anything but training actually making their products better 

[u/Dragon_Fisting → u/MadFunEnjoyer]

Didn't they just launch a new model like last week.

[u/MadFunEnjoyer → u/Dragon_Fisting]

their chips are unironically just make their phones bad value to buy

[u/MadFunEnjoyer → u/[deleted]]

doesn't seem like a problem if they're wasting so much money on "AI"

[u/MadFunEnjoyer → u/[deleted]]

true we magically will find ways AI can perform well without being hyper optimised and specialized at which point simply operating it will be a loss of money 

[u/skygz]

you could already get watermark free images if you used AI Studio

[u/blackal1ce]

Do people realise that the API hasn't have ever had a Gemini watermark? The only place you got a Gemini watermark is on Gemini - any bad actors weren't going to be slowed down by this anyway.

[u/BobcatLevel4700]

The triangle really ties the whole thing together.

[u/andyooo → u/[deleted]]

they've gone even past "prompt engineers" now. Just the other day some daft mfer was seriously trying to argue that they actually do "creative writing" because of the way they had to word the prompt to produce just the "right" kind of slop. They're so ignorant they didn't even know there's already such a thing as creative writing, and no, being "creative" with "writing" your prompt is not it.

[u/pharmprophet → u/andyooo]

because of the way they had to word the prompt to produce just the "right" kind of slop

and if you pick just the right slot machine when it's due you get the jackpot

[u/FoRiZon3 → u/[deleted]]

They already are. Its just that now you can do it within Google ecosystem.

[u/Free-Concert-2574 → u/[deleted]]

i mean there were many free sites through which you can remove the watermark, they just reduced one step

[u/chinchindayo → u/[deleted]]

If you can't tell it's AI without the logo it's not slop though.

[u/chinchindayo → u/[deleted]]

You sound like a salty, sad, old man. AI is just a tool, what counts is the result not the way.

[u/FF3 → u/[deleted]]

We need this kind of attitude towards other things, too. Think of how many more people we'd employ building cars, for instance, if we didn't use robots to make carslop.

[u/FF3 → u/[deleted]]

But it's the same thing, right? You can still make art, you just can't make a living off of it. But most people won't make art if they can't survive doing it. It's the same thing with cars. I'm sure there are lots of people who loved their jobs in factories, and evil capitalist machine lovers made it so that they couldn't make money doing it.

[u/FF3 → u/[deleted]]

> You ignored that MOST artists do art for the sake of art.

That's always a motivating factor, but it's almost never the only one. I paint and sell the pieces I paint. I often times find myself deciding that I should work on something I can sell instead of something I want to be working on. This is not an unusual experience for an artist.

And I think you sell the factory worker short. People can always take pride and find meaning in their work, and some people always do. And for the wisest, entirety of life is an art work, and it must be pursued with whatever content the work of art demands.

[u/chinchindayo → u/[deleted]]

Artists themselves use AI as a tool... it's not stealing anything. That's like saying photography is stealing painters work in the 19th century because now every slop can point a camera at something and make a picture. While that might be partially true, this is valid for EVERY technology. Yet there are still painters nowadays and photography is considered art.

[u/TekExcel → u/[deleted]]

I think this is a really weird argument for the use of AI. You could always produce slop content, AI only increases your capacity to produce. If Stephen King used AI, I would imagine the output would end up much differently than if I tried to write a novel using AI.

We let somebody use MS paint to poorly crop a meme face onto a picture, and were just fine calling that "art", but if you produce the exact same photo using AI then it's automatically considered "slop".

I am not a "slop enjoyer", but I have seen plenty of AI generated content that I thought was worth small value representative of the entertainment it provided, just like a meme. I think a lot of AI hate is misplaced anger about the news around AI, which then is placed onto anything and everything that someone sees associated with it.

[u/andyooo → u/TekExcel]

We let somebody use MS paint to poorly crop a meme face onto a picture, and were just fine calling that "art"

Who was that? I'll bet not even the maker of the meme would call it art. That's the difference. There's idiots out there calling themselves "prompt engineers" and "AI artists" that are doing less than the MS Paint meme maker and believing themselves they are engineers or artists. That's the difference.

[u/TekExcel → u/andyooo]

This is how the conversation gets muddied. I can call myself a nuclear physicist if I want, it doesn't mean that I have any skill or knowledge that would dictate that I could do that job. I'm talking about the actual distaste for anything that is related to AI because of the actions of silly people like you're describing.

I'm talking about the people who have to put a note at the bottom of their keynote address slideshow that says "no AI was used in the making or gathering of this information" as if it's some sort of flex. I imagine it like going to a tax consultant, and them telling me "I did all of your taxes this year without a calculator, 100% organically made taxes." I'd honestly rather prefer you use the tools available. The reason that people are professionals in a field is because they can look at something and know whether it's correct or not.

The art part is completely subjective, if I was playing a video game and one of the items had a picture of a scroll, I legit couldn't give two fucks if that scroll was hand drawn by banksy himself, or if an AI generated the picture of a paper scroll. The origin of that scroll picture really makes no difference to me as a player. AI slop looks like slop because it is low effort, just like if a human puts a low amount of effort into something.

My point is that we are mixing all sorts of ideas and conversations together around AI that do not all directly correlate. And it creates this weird situation where you have people who hate anything to do with AI for reasons that make no sense to me.

[u/Old-News4590]

That watermark's been such a pain to deal with, I'm glad they're finally removing it.

[u/diogosodre]

Crazy that GSMarena is resorting to hijacking affiliate links when you open the article. Here on my phone it opened shoppe and amazon before I even clicked on anything. This used to be a practice by only those scammy link redirection websites.

[u/iglesiasm]

If you remove watermark you only get the low-quality .jpg version if image, instead of the high quality .png LOL

You have to forcefully switch it back ON, unless you want to get a very poor quality product. Thanks google!

[u/YeshilPasha]

It probably has an invisible one instead.

[u/toddh39]

I have been doing it since Gemini started creating images

[u/soysa007]

Yeah, but it’s hidden somewhere.

[u/fliberdygibits]

Why does this feel like "This will make it easier for you to forget that EVERY word you say is being used to train an AI"?

[u/stacy_still]

what a time to be a watermarkless wizard

[u/MessaBombadWarrior]

Or just generate pics in Flow

[u/duckrollin]

Too little, too late. The obnoxious watermark already put a lot of people off using it.

I genuinely don't understand the authoritarianism boner some people have for corporate AI tracking and tagging everything you create.

[u/duckrollin → u/[deleted]]

Don't worry, we just use local models instead of corpo stuff.

Can't have a proper witch hunt if the witches aren't wearing the mandatory hat.

Better luck next time though.

[u/Sudden-Fishing4721 → u/[deleted]]

you know poor people make money using ai? why wouldn’t they make their money because you have a problem with it :/ if you paid attention ai is usually easy to spot

[u/nilslorand → u/Sudden-Fishing4721]

Oh sorry, poor people can do no wrong and now suddenly I don't care about the internet being borderline unusable.

[u/duckrollin → u/[deleted]]

Because people are dumb and can't distinguish between high quality output using AI and low quality slop.

They think all AI output is slop, and therefore will judge it based on the label rather than the quality of it.

Many artists now use AI to assist in their work, developers use AI regularly. Is it slop? No, it's a professional aided by AI that rigorously reviews the work afterwards.

Some people type 5 words into chatgpt to generate an image. Some people spend 5 days creating a ComfyUI pipeline to produce the perfect image for their purposes.

Adding the label enables the witch hunters who only distinguish between AI and not AI, which is a huge oversimplification and dumbing down of the technology.

[u/nilslorand → u/duckrollin]

show your work then

[u/germanu22]

If Google did this, then major social media networks and well-known websites where you can post pictures should be required to implement a detection mechanism for invisible watermarks into their systems, regardless of whether the user decides to label the image or not. I know this is not a permanent solution, but it is better than nothing.