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arXiv · 2502.04901

On the Difficulty of Constructing a Robust and Publicly-Detectable Watermark

Jaiden Fairoze·Guillermo Ortiz-Jimenez·Mel Vecerik·Somesh Jha·Sven Gowal
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Abstract

This work investigates the theoretical boundaries of creating publicly-detectable schemes to enable the provenance of watermarked imagery. Metadata-based approaches like C2PA provide unforgeability and public-detectability. ML techniques offer robust retrieval and watermarking. However, no existing scheme combines robustness, unforgeability, and public-detectability. In this work, we formally define such a scheme and establish its existence. Although theoretically possible, we find that at present, it is intractable to build certain components of our scheme without a leap in deep learning capabilities. We analyze these limitations and propose research directions that need to be addressed before we can practically realize robust and publicly-verifiable provenance.

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Jaiden Fairoze, Guillermo Ortiz-Jimenez, Mel Vecerik, Somesh Jha, Sven Gowal. 2025-02-07. On the Difficulty of Constructing a Robust and Publicly-Detectable Watermark. https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.04901

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