Social media users have discovered a controversial use case for Google’s new Gemini AI model. Remove watermarks from images from published images by GettyImages and other well-known stock media costumes.
Last week, Google expanded access to image generation capabilities in Gemini 2.0 Flash Model. This allows the model to natively generate and edit image content. It’s a powerful feature by all accounts. But it also appears to have little guardrails. Gemini 2.0 Flash critically creates images depicting celebrities and copyrighted characters, and, as mentioned previously, removes watermarks from existing photos.
Unlock new skills: Gemini 2 Flash model is really great at removing image watermarks! pic.twitter.com/6qik0flfcv
– Deedy (@deedydas) March 15, 2025
As some X and Reddit users have pointed out, Gemini 2.0 Flash not only removes watermarks, but also tries to fill in the gaps created by deleting watermarks. Other AI-powered tools do this, but Gemini 2.0 Flash seems very skilled and is free to use.
Gemini 2.0 Flash is available in Google’s AI Studio and is amazing at editing images using simple text prompts.
You can also remove the watermark from the image (and instead posting its own subtle watermark) pic.twitter.com/znhtqjst1z
– Tanay Jaipuria (@tanayj) March 16, 2025
To be clear, Gemini 2.0 Flash’s image generation capabilities are currently labelled “experimental” and “not used for production” and are only available in Google’s developer tools, such as AI Studio. The model is also not a perfect watermark removal. Gemini 2.0 flash appears to be struggling with certain translucent watermarks and watermarks that canvas most of the image.
Still, some copyright holders are certainly having problems with the lack of use restrictions on Gemini 2.0 Flash. Models containing Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Openai’s GPT-4o explicitly refuse to remove the watermark. Claude calls for the removal of watermarks from “unethical and potentially illegal” images.
Removing a watermark without the consent of the original owner is deemed illegal under US copyright laws (by such law firms) other than rare exceptions.
Google did not immediately respond to requests for comments sent outside of normal business hours.
