People are using Google’s new AI model to remove watermarks from images

Users on social media have discovered a controversial use case for Google’s new Gemini AI model: removing watermarks from images, including from images published by Getty Images and other well-known stock media outfits. Last week, Google expanded access to its Gemini 2.0 Flash model’s image generation feature, which lets the model natively generate and edit image content. It’s a powerful capability, by all accounts. But it also appears to have few guardrails. Gemini 2.0 Flash will uncomplainingly create images depicting celebrities and copyrighted characters, and — as alluded to earlier — remove watermarks from existing photos. As several X and Reddit users noted, Gemini 2.0 Flash won’t just remove watermarks, but attempt to fill in any gaps created by a watermark’s deletion. Other AI-powered tools do this, too, but Gemini 2.0 Flash seems to be exceptionally skilled at it — and free to use. To be clear, Gemini 2.0 Flash’s image generation feature is labeled as “experimental” and “no ... Read full article.