Overview

Robust watermarking studies how to attach detectable signals to text, images, audio, video, data, and AI models while preserving their quality or utility. Approaches include embedding during generation or in model parameters, using semantic or latent representations, spreading payloads across signals, and adding error-correcting codes or attack-aware training. Evaluation tests transformations such as paraphrasing, compression, cropping, regeneration, fine-tuning, and targeted forgery, with benchmarks increasingly measuring false positives and perceptual quality as well as recovery. The central tension is that stronger signals may distort content, while sophisticated edits can erase or forge marks without obvious damage, so robustness depends on the attack setting and cannot be assumed universally.

Latest papers

CardsList

208 papers35 papers in the last four weeks, up 40% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

  1. AliMark: Enhancing Robustness of Sentence-Level Watermarking Against Text Paraphrasing

    May 28, 2026Yuexin Li, Wenjie Qu, Linyu Wu +5Text WatermarkingLLM Watermarking

  2. Echoes within the Reasoning: Stealthy and Effective Watermarking via Chain of Thought

    May 27, 2026Jiacheng Lu, Yiming Li, Tao Song +4LLM WatermarkingRobust Watermarking

  3. Rotation-Invariant Spherical Watermarking via Third-Order SO(3) Representation Coupling

    May 26, 2026Pengzhen Chen, Yanwei Liu, Xiaoyan Gu +3Robust WatermarkingSpherical Harmonics

  4. Hidden in Plain Tokens: Simply Robust, Gradient-Free Watermark for Synthetic Audio

    May 25, 2026Georgios Milis, Yubin Qin, Yihan Wu +1Audio WatermarkingRobust Watermarking

  5. SAMark: A Self-Anchored Text Watermarking with Paragraph-Level Paraphrase Robustness

    May 25, 2026Jiahao Huo, Wenjie Qu, Yibo Yan +5Text WatermarkingLLM Watermarking

  6. Robust LLM Watermarking with Minimal Semantic Distortion for IP Protection

    May 22, 2026Kieu Dang, Phung Lai, NhatHai Phan +2Text WatermarkingLanguage Model Fingerprinting

  7. 4D-GSW: Kinematic-Aware Spatio-Temporal Consistent Watermarking for 4D Gaussian Splatting

    May 21, 2026Sifan Zhou, Hang Zhang, Yuhang Wang +1Robust Watermarking

  8. Verifiable Provenance and Watermarking for Generative AI: An Evidentiary Framework for International Operational Law and Domestic Courts

    May 20, 2026Gustav Olaf Yunus Laitinen-Fredriksson Lundström-Imanov, Nurana AbdullayevaData ProvenanceDigital Forensics

  9. RAW: Robust Avatar Watermarking -- Benchmarking and Baseline

    May 17, 2026Jack Parry, Jack Saunders, Vinay NamboodiriRobust Watermarking

  10. Watermarks Attack Watermarks: Re-Watermarking as a Generic Removal Strategy

    May 16, 2026Maria Bulychev, Neil G. Marchant, Benjamin I. P. RubinsteinWatermark RemovalDigital Image Forensics

  11. Compositional Adversarial Training for Robust Visual Watermarking

    May 16, 2026Anirudh Satheesh, Michael-Andrei Panaitescu-Liess, Andrew Xu +4Adversarial TrainingRobust Watermarking

  12. GuardMarkGS: Unified Ownership Tracing and Edit Deterrence for 3D Gaussian Splatting

    May 13, 2026Utae Jeong, Jaewan Choi, Junseok Lee +43D Gaussian SplattingRobust Watermarking

  13. TextSeal: A Localized LLM Watermark for Provenance & Distillation Protection

    May 12, 2026Tom Sander, Hongyan Chang, Tomáš Souček +10Language Model FingerprintingLLM Watermarking

  14. Sequential Behavioral Watermarking for LLM Agents

    May 11, 2026Hyeseon An, Shinwoo Park, Dongsu Kim +1LLM WatermarkingLLM Agents

  15. PASA: A Principled Embedding-Space Watermarking Approach for LLM-Generated Text under Semantic-Invariant Attacks

    May 9, 2026Zhenxin Ai, Haiyun HeLLM WatermarkingRobust Watermarking

  16. Chainwash: Multi-Step Rewriting Attacks on Diffusion Language Model Watermarks

    May 6, 2026Mohd Ruhul Ameen, Akif Islam, Nadim Mahmud +1Diffusion Model WatermarkingWatermark Removal

  17. SLAM: Structural Linguistic Activation Marking for Language Models

    May 6, 2026Fabrice Harel-Canada, Amit SahaiLLM WatermarkingRobust Watermarking

  18. Vol-Mark: A Watermark for 3D Medical Volume Data Via Cubic Difference Expansion and Contrastive Learning

    May 6, 2026Jiangnan Zhu, Yuntao Wang, Shengli Pan +13D Medical ImagingRobust Watermarking

  19. SWAN: Semantic Watermarking with Abstract Meaning Representation

    May 5, 2026Ziping Ye, Gourab Dey, Christos Christodoulopoulos +7Text WatermarkingLLM Watermarking

  20. Repurposing and Evaluating the (In)Feasibility of Dataset Poisoning enabled Watermarking for Contrastive Learning

    May 3, 2026Zhiyang Dai, Yansong Gao, Boyu Kuang +5Contrastive LearningDataset Watermarking

  21. MelShield: Robust Mel-Domain Audio Watermarking for Provenance Attribution of AI Generated Synthesized Speech

    May 2, 2026Yutong Jin, Qi Li, Lingshuang Liu +1Audio WatermarkingRobust Watermarking

  22. CSGuard: Toward Forgery-Resistant Watermarking in Diffusion Models via Compressed Sensing Constraint

    May 2, 2026Jiewei Lai, Lan Zhang, Chen Tang +4Diffusion Model WatermarkingCompressed Sensing

  23. Block-wise Codeword Embedding for Reliable Multi-bit Text Watermarking

    May 1, 2026Joeun Kim, HoEun Kim, Dongsup Jin +1Text WatermarkingMulti-Bit Watermarking

  24. GIFGuard: Proactive Forensics against Deepfakes in Facial GIFs via Spatiotemporal Watermarking

    Apr 29, 2026Shupeng Che, Zhiqing Guo, Changtao Miao +2Digital Image ForensicsDeepfake Detection

  25. Whether, Which, and Whose: Solving the Triple Challenge of Deepfake Proactive Forensics in Multi-Face Scenarios

    Apr 29, 2026Lei Zhang, Zhiqing Guo, Dan Ma +2Digital ForensicsImage Forgery Localization