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.

Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash model has been found capable of removing watermarks from copyrighted material and depicting copyrighted characters in its generated images.

Developers have figured out that the latest Google Gemini Flash 2.0 image editor works great as a watermark remover, though there are still guardrails in place on the consumer tools.