Customers on social media have found a controversial use case for Google’s new Gemini AI mannequin: eradicating watermarks from pictures, together with from pictures printed by Getty Pictures and different well-known inventory media outfits.
Final week, Google expanded entry to its Gemini 2.0 Flash mannequin’s picture technology characteristic, which lets the mannequin natively generate and edit picture content material. It’s a powerful capability, by all accounts. Nevertheless it additionally seems to have few guardrails. Gemini 2.0 Flash will uncomplainingly create pictures depicting celebrities and copyrighted characters, and — as alluded to earlier — take away watermarks from present pictures.
New talent unlocked: Gemini 2 Flash mannequin is absolutely superior at eradicating watermarks in pictures! pic.twitter.com/6QIk0FlfCv
— Deedy (@deedydas) March 15, 2025
As a number of X and Reddit customers famous, Gemini 2.0 Flash gained’t simply take away watermarks, however try to fill in any gaps created by a watermark’s deletion. Different AI-powered instruments do that, too, however Gemini 2.0 Flash appears to be exceptionally expert at it — and free to make use of.
Gemini 2.0 Flash, obtainable in Google’s AI studio, is wonderful at enhancing pictures with easy textual content prompts.
It can also take away watermarks from pictures (and places its personal refined watermark in as an alternative 🤣) pic.twitter.com/ZnHTQJsT1Z
— Tanay Jaipuria (@tanayj) March 16, 2025
To be clear, Gemini 2.0 Flash’s picture technology characteristic is labeled as “experimental” and “not for manufacturing use” in the mean time, and is simply obtainable in Google’s developer-facing instruments like AI Studio. The mannequin additionally isn’t an ideal watermark remover. Gemini 2.0 Flash seems to wrestle with sure semi-transparent watermarks and watermarks that canvas massive parts of pictures.
Nonetheless, some copyright holders will certainly take challenge with Gemini 2.0 Flash’s lack of utilization restrictions. Fashions together with Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet and OpenAI’s GPT-4o explicitly refuse to take away watermarks; Claude calls eradicating a watermark from a picture “unethical and doubtlessly unlawful.”
Eradicating a watermark with out the unique proprietor’s consent is taken into account unlawful beneath U.S. copyright legislation (in response to law firms like this one) outside of rare exceptions.
Google didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark despatched exterior of regular enterprise hours.
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