Meta-FC: Meta-Learning with Feature Consistency for Robust and Generalizable Watermarking

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Hauptverfasser: Li, Yuheng, Chen, Weitong, Zhu, Chengcheng, Zhang, Jiale, Ge, Chunpeng, Wu, Di, Long, Guodong
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Li, Yuheng
Chen, Weitong
Zhu, Chengcheng
Zhang, Jiale
Ge, Chunpeng
Wu, Di
Long, Guodong
author_facet Li, Yuheng
Chen, Weitong
Zhu, Chengcheng
Zhang, Jiale
Ge, Chunpeng
Wu, Di
Long, Guodong
contents Deep learning-based watermarking has made remarkable progress in recent years. To achieve robustness against various distortions, current methods commonly adopt a training strategy where a \underline{\textbf{s}}ingle \underline{\textbf{r}}andom \underline{\textbf{d}}istortion (SRD) is chosen as the noise layer in each training batch. However, the SRD strategy treats distortions independently within each batch, neglecting the inherent relationships among different types of distortions and causing optimization conflicts across batches. As a result, the robustness and generalizability of the watermarking model are limited. To address this issue, we propose a novel training strategy that enhances robustness and generalization via \underline{\textbf{meta}}-learning with \underline{\textbf{f}}eature \underline{\textbf{c}}onsistency (Meta-FC). Specifically, we randomly sample multiple distortions from the noise pool to construct a meta-training task, while holding out one distortion as a simulated ``unknown'' distortion for the meta-testing phase. Through meta-learning, the model is encouraged to identify and utilize neurons that exhibit stable activations across different types of distortions, mitigating the optimization conflicts caused by the random sampling of diverse distortions in each batch. To further promote the transformation of stable activations into distortion-invariant representations, we introduce a feature consistency loss that constrains the decoded features of the same image subjected to different distortions to remain consistent. Extensive experiments demonstrate that, compared to the SRD training strategy, Meta-FC improves the robustness and generalization of various watermarking models by an average of 1.59\%, 4.71\%, and 2.38\% under high-intensity, combined, and unknown distortions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_21849
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Meta-FC: Meta-Learning with Feature Consistency for Robust and Generalizable Watermarking
Li, Yuheng
Chen, Weitong
Zhu, Chengcheng
Zhang, Jiale
Ge, Chunpeng
Wu, Di
Long, Guodong
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Deep learning-based watermarking has made remarkable progress in recent years. To achieve robustness against various distortions, current methods commonly adopt a training strategy where a \underline{\textbf{s}}ingle \underline{\textbf{r}}andom \underline{\textbf{d}}istortion (SRD) is chosen as the noise layer in each training batch. However, the SRD strategy treats distortions independently within each batch, neglecting the inherent relationships among different types of distortions and causing optimization conflicts across batches. As a result, the robustness and generalizability of the watermarking model are limited. To address this issue, we propose a novel training strategy that enhances robustness and generalization via \underline{\textbf{meta}}-learning with \underline{\textbf{f}}eature \underline{\textbf{c}}onsistency (Meta-FC). Specifically, we randomly sample multiple distortions from the noise pool to construct a meta-training task, while holding out one distortion as a simulated ``unknown'' distortion for the meta-testing phase. Through meta-learning, the model is encouraged to identify and utilize neurons that exhibit stable activations across different types of distortions, mitigating the optimization conflicts caused by the random sampling of diverse distortions in each batch. To further promote the transformation of stable activations into distortion-invariant representations, we introduce a feature consistency loss that constrains the decoded features of the same image subjected to different distortions to remain consistent. Extensive experiments demonstrate that, compared to the SRD training strategy, Meta-FC improves the robustness and generalization of various watermarking models by an average of 1.59\%, 4.71\%, and 2.38\% under high-intensity, combined, and unknown distortions.
title Meta-FC: Meta-Learning with Feature Consistency for Robust and Generalizable Watermarking
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.21849