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.

People appear to be using Google's new Gemini model to remove watermarks from images, according to reports on social media.

Google's experimental Gemini model can generate and edit images natively, but people are using it to remove watermarks and manipulate images.