Skip to main content

Shutterstock defends its photos against Google’s watermark-removal AI

shutterstock watermark randomizer photo editing
Scyther5/123RF
Photographers who for years have been thinking that adding a watermark to their images protected them from copyright violators were unnerved by recent news claiming that it’s now easy to remove such watermarks without degrading the image.

A team of Google researchers demonstrated the dubious feat using a specially designed algorithm that it showed off at the recent Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference in Hawaii. To do it perfectly, however, the algorithm needs to analyze thousands of images with the very same watermark. In that case, stock photo companies, which watermark millions of photos for image previews, seemed to be at particular risk.

Recommended Videos

Google’s watermark-erasing software scans multiple images until it identifies a recurring pattern, which it concludes to be the watermark. It’s then able to quickly and automatically remove the mark, leaving an unblemished image identical to the one for sale on the stock site.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Shutterstock’s response

But in recent days one of these stock photo companies, Shutterstock, has fought back by reverse engineering Google’s software, according to the The Next Web.

To confuse the algorithm and therefore make it harder for it to effectively remove watermarks, Shutterstock engineers designed a “watermark randomizer” that adds subtle inconsistencies to its marks, ensuring each one is a little different.

By adding these small changes to the watermarks across the millions of images it offers on its site, Shutterstock has been able to prevent the algorithm from identifying repeating patterns that would enable it to remove those watermarks.

“The shapes vary per image and include contributor names,” Shutterstock CTO Martin Brodbeck told TNW. “By creating a completely different watermark for each image, it makes it hard to truly identify the shape.”

Brodbeck added that “changing the opacity and location of a watermark does not make it more secure; however, changing the geometry does.”

Other stock sites would be wise to follow Shutterstock’s example, though it’s likely to be only a matter of time before a programmer creates another watermark-destroying algorithm that can deal with Shutterstock’s solution. And of course, those determined to remove a watermark can still do it manually on a PC, though it can be time consuming and result in a less-than-perfect image.

The battle to effectively protect images online looks set to continue for some time to come.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Google One subscribers now have enhanced photo-editing tools on iPhones
Pixel 6 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro in hand.

Google One subscribers on iPhones can now tweak portrait photos and HDR levels in the Google Photos app as part of a new subscription perk. The change was spotted by 9to5Google and follows a broader rollout to Android phones that started in February.

If you're running iOS 14.0 and have an iPhone with 3GB of RAM -- essentially the iPhone 7 Plus, 8 Plus, X, and above -- you'll be able to make use of these new tools. The first of these features is portrait lighting, which lets you change the position of light sources in portrait photos. There's also a "blur" a tool that allows for the addition of retroactive software blur on images captured without portrait mode.

Read more
Google adds a private locked photos folder to iPhones for ‘personal’ photos
Google Photos logo.

Google Photos will soon let iPhone and Android users save their photos behind a biometrically protected locked folder as Google pushes for greater privacy features on mobile. It's a nice way to get some peace of mind and keep sensitive personal photos off the cloud.

Locked Folder is a feature Google introduced for Pixels earlier this year that lets them hide sensitive photos out of view. If a photo is hidden away behind a "locked folder," it won't show up. It's a lot like the hidden album feature on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, but with the benefit of password or biometric protection.  Images in the locked folder also aren't synced to Google Photos, but restricted to the device used. Locked Folder will come to iPhones early next year, while non-Pixel Android users will have it sometime "soon."

Read more
Google now wants you to scroll forever on its Search for mobile
google search mobile

Continuous scrolling is synonymous with social media sites seeking to keep you on their app/website. Whether it's Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook -- all of them offer continuous scrolling so that you stay on their service for as long as possible. Now, Google wants you to endlessly scroll search results on its Search page for mobile. The company says the new change will make "browsing search results more seamless and intuitive."

From the explanation that Google has provided on its blog, it looks like Search on mobile will showcase more related results to open-ended questions like "What to cook with potatoes?" instead of simply showing you the results from the second page of the Search.

Read more