Off-The-Shelf Image-to-Image Models Are All You Need To Defeat Image Protection Schemes

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Pleimling, Xavier, Abdullah, Sifat Muhammad, Balde, Gunjan, Gao, Peng, Mondal, Mainack, Jadliwala, Murtuza, Viswanath, Bimal
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Pleimling, Xavier
Abdullah, Sifat Muhammad
Balde, Gunjan
Gao, Peng
Mondal, Mainack
Jadliwala, Murtuza
Viswanath, Bimal
author_facet Pleimling, Xavier
Abdullah, Sifat Muhammad
Balde, Gunjan
Gao, Peng
Mondal, Mainack
Jadliwala, Murtuza
Viswanath, Bimal
contents Advances in Generative AI (GenAI) have led to the development of various protection strategies to prevent the unauthorized use of images. These methods rely on adding imperceptible protective perturbations to images to thwart misuse such as style mimicry or deepfake manipulations. Although previous attacks on these protections required specialized, purpose-built methods, we demonstrate that this is no longer necessary. We show that off-the-shelf image-to-image GenAI models can be repurposed as generic ``denoisers" using a simple text prompt, effectively removing a wide range of protective perturbations. Across 8 case studies spanning 6 diverse protection schemes, our general-purpose attack not only circumvents these defenses but also outperforms existing specialized attacks while preserving the image's utility for the adversary. Our findings reveal a critical and widespread vulnerability in the current landscape of image protection, indicating that many schemes provide a false sense of security. We stress the urgent need to develop robust defenses and establish that any future protection mechanism must be benchmarked against attacks from off-the-shelf GenAI models. Code is available in this repository: https://github.com/mlsecviswanath/img2imgdenoiser
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_22197
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Off-The-Shelf Image-to-Image Models Are All You Need To Defeat Image Protection Schemes
Pleimling, Xavier
Abdullah, Sifat Muhammad
Balde, Gunjan
Gao, Peng
Mondal, Mainack
Jadliwala, Murtuza
Viswanath, Bimal
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Advances in Generative AI (GenAI) have led to the development of various protection strategies to prevent the unauthorized use of images. These methods rely on adding imperceptible protective perturbations to images to thwart misuse such as style mimicry or deepfake manipulations. Although previous attacks on these protections required specialized, purpose-built methods, we demonstrate that this is no longer necessary. We show that off-the-shelf image-to-image GenAI models can be repurposed as generic ``denoisers" using a simple text prompt, effectively removing a wide range of protective perturbations. Across 8 case studies spanning 6 diverse protection schemes, our general-purpose attack not only circumvents these defenses but also outperforms existing specialized attacks while preserving the image's utility for the adversary. Our findings reveal a critical and widespread vulnerability in the current landscape of image protection, indicating that many schemes provide a false sense of security. We stress the urgent need to develop robust defenses and establish that any future protection mechanism must be benchmarked against attacks from off-the-shelf GenAI models. Code is available in this repository: https://github.com/mlsecviswanath/img2imgdenoiser
title Off-The-Shelf Image-to-Image Models Are All You Need To Defeat Image Protection Schemes
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.22197