MirrorMark: Generalizable Mirrored Sampling for Multi-bit LLM Watermarking

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Jiang, Ya, Boroujeny, Massieh Kordi, Kumar, Surender Suresh, Zeng, Kai
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Jiang, Ya
Boroujeny, Massieh Kordi
Kumar, Surender Suresh
Zeng, Kai
author_facet Jiang, Ya
Boroujeny, Massieh Kordi
Kumar, Surender Suresh
Zeng, Kai
contents As large language models (LLMs) become integral to applications such as question answering and content creation, reliable content attribution has become increasingly important. Watermarking is a promising approach, but most existing methods either provide only binary signals or achieve multi-bit embedding by distorting the generation distribution. We propose MirrorMark, a generalizable mapping-centric approach for multi-bit LLM watermarking. MirrorMark separates the symbol mapping rule from the base watermarking sampler and maps each symbol to a mod-1 mirroring transformation of a detector-reproducible pseudorandom object, such as sampling values or permutation ranks. A binary-tokenizer analysis shows that complementary mappings yield larger matched--mismatched score gaps than independent-key or shift-based mappings. When composed with a distortion-free base sampler, MirrorMark preserves the token probability distribution by design and maintains text quality in practice. To support practical payload embedding, we introduce a Context-Anchored Balanced Scheduler (CABS), which balances token assignments across message positions while localizing edit effects. We further provide theoretical EER analyses for two representative sampler instantiations. Experiments show that MirrorMark achieves strong detectability and bit accuracy while maintaining text quality comparable to non-watermarked generation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_22246
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle MirrorMark: Generalizable Mirrored Sampling for Multi-bit LLM Watermarking
Jiang, Ya
Boroujeny, Massieh Kordi
Kumar, Surender Suresh
Zeng, Kai
Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
As large language models (LLMs) become integral to applications such as question answering and content creation, reliable content attribution has become increasingly important. Watermarking is a promising approach, but most existing methods either provide only binary signals or achieve multi-bit embedding by distorting the generation distribution. We propose MirrorMark, a generalizable mapping-centric approach for multi-bit LLM watermarking. MirrorMark separates the symbol mapping rule from the base watermarking sampler and maps each symbol to a mod-1 mirroring transformation of a detector-reproducible pseudorandom object, such as sampling values or permutation ranks. A binary-tokenizer analysis shows that complementary mappings yield larger matched--mismatched score gaps than independent-key or shift-based mappings. When composed with a distortion-free base sampler, MirrorMark preserves the token probability distribution by design and maintains text quality in practice. To support practical payload embedding, we introduce a Context-Anchored Balanced Scheduler (CABS), which balances token assignments across message positions while localizing edit effects. We further provide theoretical EER analyses for two representative sampler instantiations. Experiments show that MirrorMark achieves strong detectability and bit accuracy while maintaining text quality comparable to non-watermarked generation.
title MirrorMark: Generalizable Mirrored Sampling for Multi-bit LLM Watermarking
topic Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.22246