Uncolorable Examples: Preventing Unauthorized AI Colorization via Perception-Aware Chroma-Restrictive Perturbation

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Nii, Yuki, Waseda, Futa, Chang, Ching-Chun, Echizen, Isao
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Nii, Yuki
Waseda, Futa
Chang, Ching-Chun
Echizen, Isao
author_facet Nii, Yuki
Waseda, Futa
Chang, Ching-Chun
Echizen, Isao
contents AI-based colorization has shown remarkable capability in generating realistic color images from grayscale inputs. However, it poses risks of copyright infringement -- for example, the unauthorized colorization and resale of monochrome manga and films. Despite these concerns, no effective method currently exists to prevent such misuse. To address this, we introduce the first defensive paradigm, Uncolorable Examples, which embed imperceptible perturbations into grayscale images to invalidate unauthorized colorization. To ensure real-world applicability, we establish four criteria: effectiveness, imperceptibility, transferability, and robustness. Our method, Perception-Aware Chroma-Restrictive Perturbation (PAChroma), generates Uncolorable Examples that meet these four criteria by optimizing imperceptible perturbations with a Laplacian filter to preserve perceptual quality, and applying diverse input transformations during optimization to enhance transferability across models and robustness against common post-processing (e.g., compression). Experiments on ImageNet and Danbooru datasets demonstrate that PAChroma effectively degrades colorization quality while maintaining the visual appearance. This work marks the first step toward protecting visual content from illegitimate AI colorization, paving the way for copyright-aware defenses in generative media.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_08979
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Uncolorable Examples: Preventing Unauthorized AI Colorization via Perception-Aware Chroma-Restrictive Perturbation
Nii, Yuki
Waseda, Futa
Chang, Ching-Chun
Echizen, Isao
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
AI-based colorization has shown remarkable capability in generating realistic color images from grayscale inputs. However, it poses risks of copyright infringement -- for example, the unauthorized colorization and resale of monochrome manga and films. Despite these concerns, no effective method currently exists to prevent such misuse. To address this, we introduce the first defensive paradigm, Uncolorable Examples, which embed imperceptible perturbations into grayscale images to invalidate unauthorized colorization. To ensure real-world applicability, we establish four criteria: effectiveness, imperceptibility, transferability, and robustness. Our method, Perception-Aware Chroma-Restrictive Perturbation (PAChroma), generates Uncolorable Examples that meet these four criteria by optimizing imperceptible perturbations with a Laplacian filter to preserve perceptual quality, and applying diverse input transformations during optimization to enhance transferability across models and robustness against common post-processing (e.g., compression). Experiments on ImageNet and Danbooru datasets demonstrate that PAChroma effectively degrades colorization quality while maintaining the visual appearance. This work marks the first step toward protecting visual content from illegitimate AI colorization, paving the way for copyright-aware defenses in generative media.
title Uncolorable Examples: Preventing Unauthorized AI Colorization via Perception-Aware Chroma-Restrictive Perturbation
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08979