Social media users have recently discovered that Google's new Gemini 2.0 Flash AI model can be used to remove watermarks from images. As reported by TechCrunch, this isn't completely new. Other AI image models have been able to remove watermarks. However, Gemini 2.0 Flash appears to be better than all other AI models at this particular task.

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.