Google is shipping the latest “experimental” features of its Gemini 2.0 Flash AI model to more developers across all regions, and people are finding some concerning abilities that include editing out watermarks from photos.
The company’s lightweight localized on-device AI model is now equipped with native image generation that can not only produce pictures from a text prompt but also let you conversationally edit images. Over the weekend, users found that it can also remove watermarks with precision, TechCrunch reports.
Tools like Watermark Remover.io can already scrub marks from companies like Shutterstock, and a research team at Google built a watermark removal algorithm in 2017 to highlight the need for more secure protections. Conversely, some AI tools — like OpenAI’s GPT-4o — will refuse requests to remove them.
Gemini 2.0 Flash, however, seems to be better than other options at removing complex watermarks like Getty Images stamps and filling in the image. After it removes the watermark, it will add a SynthID mark, effectively replacing a copyright mark with an “edited with AI” one. But it’s possible to remove AI marks using AI, too, as we’ve seen before with Samsung’s object erase tool.
Users also noted that Gemini 2.0 Flash could apparently add recognizable images of real people like Elon Musk into photos, something that the full Gemini model doesn’t allow.
Flash’s latest image features are only available for developers through AI Studio for now — so its apparent lack of guardrails isn’t quite open for everyone to use (or abuse). We’ve asked Google if there are protections in place to stop things like watermark removal but haven’t yet heard back.