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watermarks-remover/skills/remove-ai-marks/references/mark-classes.md
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guillaume 481f32aa48 docs: two-layer provenance model and residual-risk honesty
Add Institute of AI PM C2PA/SynthID reference, soft-binding out-of-scope
notes, and residual-risk verification guidance so metadata strip is not
mistaken for full watermark clearance.
2026-08-11 14:08:21 -07:00

2.8 KiB
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Mark classes

1. Edit-based text (Unicode / rules)

Invisible or near-invisible characters, exotic spaces, bidi controls, tag characters, synonym tables.

Inspect kinds (Layer A) Examples
zwj_family ZWSP, ZWNJ, ZWJ, WJ, BOM
bidi LRE/RLO/LRI/…
tag_chars U+E0001U+E007F
variation_selector VS1VS256
space NBSP, em space, ideographic space
confusable Cyrillic/fullwidth Latin (aggressive)

Removal: clean_text.py / Layer A — deterministic, verifiable.

Maps to Nature paper “edit-based watermarking.”

2. Generative / statistical text (token sampling)

Bias next-token sampling toward a pseudo-random green list / score (Kirchenbauer, SynthID-Text / Tournament sampling, etc.). Signal lives in word choice, not metadata.

Removal: Layer B rewrite (paraphrase → back-translate → structural). Best-effort; no gold cert without vendor detector/key.

Maps to Nature paper primary method (SynthID-Text).

3. Data-driven / backdoor

Model trained or fine-tuned so trigger prompts produce marked or identifiable behavior.

Out of scope for this skill (model-side).

4. File provenance metadata (C2PA / EXIF / XMP / props)

Signed Content Credentials and AI generator tags in containers (hard-bound to the file: JUMBF/APP11, PNG chunks, XMP packets, OOXML props, etc.).

Industry framing (C2PA + SynthID two-layer model; see Institute of AI PM guide in README references):

Layer Mechanism Survives metadata strip? This project
Hard-bound C2PA Signed manifest in the file No — strip/re-encode drops it In scopeclean_file / clean_image
Soft binding Imperceptible watermark in content that can resolve to a remote manifest Yes (by design) Out of scope — pixel/audio/video signal
Standalone SynthID-class Pixel / waveform / token watermark without needing C2PA Yes for media; text is weaker Media OOS; text → Layer B best-effort
Format Support
PNG / JPEG Full strip (stdlib + optional exiftool)
SVG Drop metadata/XMP blocks
PDF Prefer exiftool; degraded stdlib XMP strip
DOCX / ODT Scrub zip XML props / customXml
HTML Meta generator / JSON-LD / data-ai*
Markdown YAML frontmatter AI keys

Removal: clean_file.py / clean_image.py — usually verifiable by re-inspect.

Honest report: after a successful C2PA strip, soft-bound / pixel SynthID (if the generator used them) may still be detectable by vendor tools (e.g. SynthID Detector, Content Credentials verify sites).

5. Pixel-domain image (and audio/video) watermarks

Invisible media marks (e.g. SynthID for images/audio/video) and C2PA soft binding that lives in the signal, not the metadata. Out of scope.