With AI image and video tools, it has become easy to produce realistic visual results in response to a simple prompt, or uploaded photo or some combination of these two. This makes them a powerful tool for design, education, marketing, entertainment and more.
But there is one basic question to consider: How can you tell if a visual was generated or edited by artificial intelligence? Watermarks are one possible solution. Watermarks alone are not a silver bullet for AI visual detection, but they add a layer of context in a media environment where images and video are convincing and viral in scale.
What Are Watermarks in AI Image and Video Tools?
A watermark can be defined as a mark, tag or hidden signal that provides the context for where content originated or how it was produced. There are three types of AI watermarking:
- visible
- invisible
- metadata
For example, a visible watermark is when a logo sits visibly on a corner of an image or video. Invisible watermarks are embedded directly into a file and require the use of software to detect. AI image and video tool metadata often lists the AI tool or describes the creation process but it may be lost when a file is saved or re-uploaded.
Why People Expect Watermarks to Solve the Trust Problem
Many expect watermarks to easily identify the nature of media content. If a video has watermarks, many people assume that video is AI-generated. And without watermarks, the expectation is that the content is real or human-generated. This is a logical thought process given the current media landscape but it’s also an imperfect and often unreliable measure.
People expect AI content watermarks to be a reliable tool for reducing misinformation, protecting creators and spotting synthetic media. Many also expect a signal when tools are available for more open-ended or unmoderated output, such as a non-censored AI image generator.
What Watermarks Actually Do
Watermarks are most effective as context signals. In other words, visible marks can be used to quickly signal to viewers the nature or origin of an image. Visible AI watermarks reduce the odds of content being mistaken for real photography or video footage. They also encourage more responsible media publishing. With knowledge that some AI content may be labeled with AI watermarks, creators are less likely to mislabel it as authentic. For brands and organizations, visible AI watermarks help to show that AI was used as part of the production process instead of keeping the AI content a secret.
The Weaknesses of Watermarks in Practical Applications
Watermarks are often easy to damage. Whether overtly printed or secretly embedded, a watermark can be cropped, obscured, blurred, or simply cut out. Compressing a video can degrade its watermark. A screenshot might delete a watermark’s embedded metadata entirely, or the image may be reposted to another app in such a way that this metadata is stripped away.
Likewise, invisible watermarks are not bulletproof. While they may endure a limited amount of editing, more substantial changes may wipe them clean. For instance, while a watermark on a NSFW AI video generator is necessary, it isn’t enough to address consent and privacy issues or to prevent misuse of AI content.
Watermarks Still Have Value, Even When Not Flawless
The presence of limits doesn’t make a watermark meaningless. No safety mechanism is bulletproof, but some are still useful in some cases. Watermarks make it difficult for people to casually misuse AI content, give platforms or consumers a reason to investigate more deeply, and create a barrier for misuse in general.
We should see watermarks as an additional safeguard rather than the only solution to protect the public against AI misinformation. Watermarks also serve as a layer to be used alongside other protective measures, such as disclosures, source checks, platform policies, and media literacy education. While they won’t prevent every instance of a manipulated or misused image or video, they can still help support responsible usage.
The Key Differences Between Visible and Invisible Watermarks
For general users, visible watermarks are simpler to spot and interpret. This type of watermark is suitable when the primary focus is on open disclosure — for example, in a teaser for a video, a social media post, an education example, or an officially branded piece of AI content.
Invisible watermarks are more sophisticated in nature. They allow platforms or software to flag AI content automatically without affecting the content’s appearance. However, they may not be visible to everyday people — and their underlying metadata may be removed.
The Effects of Watermarks on Creators, Companies, and Platforms
Content creators might have mixed feelings when they choose to add watermarks to their content. A watermark might protect their work, provide additional information about the source, and help prevent viewers from getting confused, but it might also look sloppy or ugly, especially if applied poorly or excessively.
Brands may choose to include watermarks and labels to improve trust, such as for content made from an AI video generator of text or image. As long as this content isn’t presented in a deceptive way, it can serve a useful purpose.
Common Myths About AI Watermarks
Just because a file has a watermark doesn’t mean it’s certified as yours. It might just point to which tool created it; it doesn’t necessarily mean you, or the creator of your prompt or concept, or even the creator of the final output, owns the file.
Conversely, not all AI video and image generation leaves a watermark. It’s possible for an unfiltered AI video generator with voice, to leave no trace of itself. However, it’s something to keep an eye on anyway. Not all AI video is a bad video. AI-generated images are actually very creative and could actually be helpful.
A Few Words About AI Image and Video Usage
If you make something with AI, you can’t do much better than keeping as many of the original files, prompts, licenses, and metadata from the export, as you can. These things can make for an easy explanation later.
Also, use AI video or images in public when it matters to you — for example, when it looks like a real person, is about news, is political, or is medical-related, or involves private information, it’s best to let people know you’ve used AI.
If a video or image doesn’t show a watermark, don’t immediately assume it wasn’t made with the help of AI. Rather, you should also investigate the source, the context, the upload history, and the plausibility of any claims made by the video or image.
A Better, Watermarked Future
What might come in the future is a mash-up of all the things we’ve talked about. Watermarks might be tougher to remove, platforms might adopt one watermarking approach, and more provenance-based systems may come online — which would make it easier to know who created a file, who edited it, and where it’s gone. It will probably also come to be that consumers are more familiar with looking at watermarked content.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that every image needs to be treated with suspicion; rather, we just want to be able to give people the information to interpret images themselves.
Conclusion: Why Do We Need AI Content Watermarks?
AI content watermarks matter because, in a time where AI images and video are so easy to make and difficult to authenticate, they help support the cause of transparency in content. It helps us see when a certain video or image is synthetic, altered, or generated using a certain application.
However, watermarking is far from a perfect solution for AI content. It can be deleted. It can be easy to overlook. When content is passed around, the watermark can be lost entirely. And as you’ve probably now gathered, watermarking doesn’t even make it guaranteed that an image is authentic to its source, author, or subject.
But they’re still a nice gesture, even though it won’t solve everything. A watermark is most useful with a system that discloses and transparently allows the content to be produced and published. A watermark is also useful when the platforms you’re using all adopt the same watermarking system, and for your general digital media literacy. Watermarks aren’t the answer, but we should still respect them.
