People Are Using Google's New AI Model To Remove Watermarks From Images

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Last week, Google expanded access to its Gemini 2.0 Flash model's image generation feature, which lets the model natively generate and edit image content. It's a powerful capability, by all accounts. But it also appears to have few guardrails. Gemini 2.0 Flash will uncomplainingly create images depicting celebrities and copyrighted characters, and -- as alluded to earlier -- remove watermarks from existing photos.

As several X and Reddit users noted, Gemini 2.0 Flash won't just remove watermarks, but will also attempt to fill in any gaps created by a watermark's deletion. Other AI-powered tools do this, too, but Gemini 2.0 Flash seems to be exceptionally skilled at it -- and free to use. To be clear, Gemini 2.0 Flash's image generation feature is labeled as "experimental" and "not for production use" at the moment, and is only available in Google's developer-facing tools like AI Studio. The model also isn't a perfect watermark remover. Gemini 2.0 Flash appears to struggle with certain semi-transparent watermarks and watermarks that canvas large portions of images.

Content protections

[Petersko]

Goodbye to content protection. The whole idea is dying. Content will increasingly be provided by creative altruists and fools.

The altruists have my respect. Whatever their motivations may be, ownership and recompense are not among them. Usually they have reasonable assumptions about the lack of control they have over the works they have released into the wild.

The fools... oddly enough, they too have my respect. Even if I think their expectations are unreasonable, they're doing their best while the world prepares to teach them a lesson or two.

The groups that I don't respect as much are those who will go down endlessly fighting to preserve a paradigm that doesn't exist anymore.

Now I believe that creative work has value, that it should be protected, and that in a perfect world it wouldn't be stolen. And yes, I consider piracy stealing. But... that's not where we're headed. When cds made the medium irrelevant the writing was on the wall.

Re:Content protections

[alvinrod]

Content production will just shift. If an AI can churn out cheap films people will spend money going to plays, concerts, or other live entertainment that the previously would have spent on going to movies. Actors can still make a living from live stage performances even if it's not nearly as much as they could as film stars.

Look at the number of people making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on streaming platforms. That form of content didn't exist until recently and now some of the top earners do better than many actors or musicians.

The technology may change, but the human desire for content won't. People will spend their money or attention to consume whatever content best suits their fancy. The end of one form of content or its delivery is merely the opportunity for new forms to arise and take over.

Re:

[shmlco]

Look at the [small] number of people making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on streaming platforms.

Fixed that for you. Like most things, the wealth is tied up in the top 0.1% while the vast majority probably couldn't even buy a cup of coffee with what they make.

Re:Content protections

[garett_spencley]

I don't share your pessimism.

The Achilles Heel of LLMs is that they are trained on human generated content. If that human generated content disappears, then so does the LLMs. People, in general, don't just crave "content", as if the concept is something ephemeral that exists in a vacuum. They crave specific content that meets specific requirements.

Maybe someone will be content watching entertainment, for example, that is completely artificial in every way (AI generated with nothing novel). But have you noticed how fashion, trends and subcultures tend to form around loathing cookie cutter, bland and artificial? Have you heard the term "Corporate Memphis" ? It is a recognized art style that has caught on amongst marketing teams and departments. It has it's advantages but it also has entire groups of people who deride, make fun of and hate it.

Now, even if you then argue that an AI's super power is that it can produce content in any kind of style or aesthetic... it can't do things that are truly novel or original. Of course now we open the door to a philosophical discussion about whether humans can generate *truly* novel content either. But what an AI will always lack is that "human touch." The authenticity. The culturally relevant commentary. The empathy and touching on something that people "feel" is "real." The "human touch" that most everyone, except on tech news sites :P, seems to be craving more of in the social media era.

I realize that part of your thesis is that novel content will continue to be produced by "altruists." To this I offer that the second commercial interests start to sense that their competitive advantage will come through distancing themselves from AI content and embracing branding and messaging that feels authentic and novel and is not artificial .,.. suddenly human artists are going to find themselves in big demand. And then maybe that new content will train new LLMs and we will cycle when the economy does poorly and people embrace LLMs to cut costs again.

And I give that like ... a year at most.

We need to remember that the consumers of content are human beings. And human beings are picky and judgy and finicky and trendy af. And businesses are there to sell shit to those humans.

Re:Content protections

[Petersko]

I appreciate your response. It makes me want to reframe parts of my post... which is a sure sign I painted some pretty overly broad strokes... but I think I'll let it be.

But... I think you overestimate the demand for authenticity or the "human touch" on the part of the general public. In the same way that real drummers have largely been supplanted, sampling is more prevalent than microphones, autotune touches everything, and live performances are often lip synced with backing tracks, I think authenticity is not particularly in demand. A good hook is far more valued than a complete, coherent artistic thought. And AI can create a hook. In image generation, AI is all hook. And people lap it up, just like they do HDR photos that started with a real picture, but don't represent nature to any reasonable degree.

Locked out

[malx]

I don’t know who is getting unfiltered access to manipulate celebrity images. When I tried to get Gemini to touch up an AI generated image of myself (based on photos of myself I uploaded to a different model), it said that it could not work with images of real people.

Bullshit, nobody uses Gemini AI

[ebunga]

This can't possibly be real. Nobody uses Gemini AI intentionally.

So what?

[allo]

GIMPs resynthesize could do it 10 years ago. And GIMP was a lot worse than Photoshop for that. When it comes to AI you can use the very first stable diffusion model (that one that can't draw fingers) for that and it works. There are example codes for API usage, that use person detection combined with image generation to automatically remove persons from images.

Finally a real use!

[gweihir]

That took some time...

Looks like generative AI actually can be used for some stuff:
- Malware authors find that writing malware becomes a lot easier and faster
- Writers of crap find it can do better crap
- And now we finally can automate watermark removal! Please do DRM removal next!

A great win and definitely worth the extreme investments!

Re: Please do DRM removal next!

[couchslug]

That will be an important way to preserve vendor-locked content when vendors cease to be.

Handy!

[GameboyRMH]

Any way to save and run this locally?