From 404 Media
Sora 2 Watermark Removers Flood the Web
By Matthew Gault
Sora 2, Open AI’s new AI video generator, puts a visual watermark on every video it generates. But the little cartoon-eyed cloud logo meant to help people distinguish between reality and AI-generated bullshit is easy to remove and there are half a dozen websites that will help anyone do it in a few minutes.
A simple search for “sora watermark” on any social media site will return links to places where a user can upload a Sora 2 video and remove the watermark. 404 Media tested three of these websites, and they all seamlessly removed the watermark from the video in a matter of seconds...
Hany Farid, a UC Berkeley professor and an expert on digitally manipulated images, said he’s not shocked at how fast people were able to remove watermarks from Sora 2 videos. “It was predictable,” he said. “Sora isn’t the first AI model to add visible watermarks and this isn’t the first time that within hours of these models being released, someone released code or a service to remove these watermarks.”
Farid told 404 Media that Sora 2 wasn’t uniquely dangerous. It’s just one among many. “It is part of a continuum of AI models being able to create images and video that are passing through the uncanny valley,” he said. “Having said that, both Veo 3 and Sora 2 are big steps in our ability to create highly visual compelling videos. And, it seems likely that the same types of abuses we’ve seen in the past will be supercharged by these new powerful tools.”
According to Farid, Open AI is decent at employing strategies like watermarks, content credentials, and semantic guardrails to manage malicious use. But it doesn’t matter. “It is just a matter of time before someone else releases a model without these safeguards,” he said...
Hany Farid is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences and the School of Information at UC Berkeley.
