arXiv:2603.12949eess.IVcs.CR2026-03

扩散图像编辑会意外破坏水印,连常规语义修改都可能让水印失效。

Editing Away the Evidence: Diffusion-Based Image Manipulation and the Failure Modes of Robust Watermarking

  • 将扩散编辑建模为随机过程,解释水印信号如何衰减
  • 实验证明常规编辑可显著降低水印可恢复性
  • 为生成式编辑下的水印设计提供新思路

鲁棒的不可见水印广泛用于版权保护、内容溯源和责任认定,通过嵌入能抵御常见后处理操作的隐藏信号实现。然而,基于扩散的图像编辑引入了一类根本不同的变换:它注入噪声并利用强大的生成先验重构图像,常改变语义内容却保持照片真实感。本文提供统一的理论与实证分析,表明非对抗性的扩散编辑可能无意中削弱或消除鲁棒水印。我们将扩散编辑建模为一种随机变换,其逐步压缩离流形扰动,导致许多水印方案使用的低幅信号衰减。分析推导出水印信噪比与互信息在扩散轨迹上的边界,得出可靠恢复在信息论上变得不可能的条件。我们进一步在多种扩散编辑场景与强度下评估了代表性水印系统,结果表明即使常规语义编辑也能显著降低水印可恢复性。最后,讨论了对内容溯源的影响,并提出生成式图像编辑下水印设计的原则。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Robust invisible watermarks are widely used to support copyright protection, content provenance, and accountability by embedding hidden signals designed to survive common post-processing operations. However, diffusion-based image editing introduces a fundamentally different class of transformations: it injects noise and reconstructs images through a powerful generative prior, often altering semantic content while preserving photorealism. In this paper, we provide a unified theoretical and empirical analysis showing that non-adversarial diffusion editing can unintentionally degrade or remove robust watermarks. We model diffusion editing as a stochastic transformation that progressively contracts off-manifold perturbations, causing the low-amplitude signals used by many watermarking schemes to decay. Our analysis derives bounds on watermark signal-to-noise ratio and mutual information along diffusion trajectories, yielding conditions under which reliable recovery becomes information-theoretically impossible. We further evaluate representative watermarking systems under a range of diffusion-based editing scenarios and strengths. The results indicate that even routine semantic edits can significantly reduce watermark recoverability. Finally, we discuss the implications for content provenance and outline principles for designing watermarking approaches that remain robust under generative image editing.

水印技术扩散模型图像编辑版权保护

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