Watermarking has emerged as a key defense against the misuse of machine-generated images (MGIs). Yet the robustness of these protections remains underexplored. To reveal the limits of SOTA proactive image watermarking defenses, we propose HIDE&SEEK (HS), a suite of versatile and cost-effective attacks that reliably remove embedded watermarks while preserving high visual fidelity.
@article{arxiv.2603.01067,
title = {Hide&Seek: Remove Image Watermarks with Negligible Cost via Pixel-wise Reconstruction},
author = {Huajie Chen and Tianqing Zhu and Hailin Yang and Yuchen Zhong and Yang Zhang and Hui Sun and Heng Xu and Zuobin Ying and Lihua Yin and Wanlei Zhou},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.01067},
year = {2026}
}