Hide&Seek: Remove Image Watermarks with Negligible Cost via Pixel-wise Reconstruction

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.

Huajie Chen, Tianqing Zhu, Hailin Yang, Yuchen Zhong, Yang Zhang, Hui Sun, Heng Xu, Zuobin Ying, Lihua Yin, Wanlei Zhou · 2026