# StegaStamp: Invisible Hyperlinks in Physical Photographs

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.05343 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05343/

## Key facts

- Cited by 265 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 10 Apr 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 265)

- [Invisible Image Watermarks Are Provably Removable Using Generative AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01953/) (2023)
- [MBRS : Enhancing Robustness of DNN-based Watermarking by Mini-Batch of Real and Simulated JPEG Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08211/) (2021)
- [Robust Watermarking Using Generative Priors Against Image Editing: From Benchmarking to Advances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.18775/) (2024)
- [WAVES: Benchmarking the Robustness of Image Watermarks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.08573/) (2024)
- [Generalizable and Animatable Gaussian Head Avatar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07971/) (2024)
- [RingID: Rethinking Tree-Ring Watermarking for Enhanced Multi-Key Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14055/) (2024)
- [Watermarks in the Sand: Impossibility of Strong Watermarking for Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04378/) (2023)
- [Robustness of AI-Image Detectors: Fundamental Limits and Practical Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.00076/) (2023)
- [An Undetectable Watermark for Generative Image Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07369/) (2024)
- [Evading Watermark based Detection of AI-Generated Content](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.03807/) (2023)
- [The "Beatrix'' Resurrections: Robust Backdoor Detection via Gram Matrices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.11715/) (2022)
- [Data Feedback Loops: Model-driven Amplification of Dataset Biases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03942/) (2022)
- [RoSteALS: Robust Steganography using Autoencoder Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03400/) (2023)
- [Deep Model Intellectual Property Protection via Deep Watermarking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.04980/) (2021)
- [WOUAF: Weight Modulation for User Attribution and Fingerprinting in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04744/) (2023)
- [Watermark Anything with Localized Messages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.07231/) (2024)
- [Black-Box Forgery Attacks on Semantic Watermarks for Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03283/) (2024)
- [TrustMark: Universal Watermarking for Arbitrary Resolution Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18297/) (2023)
- [SoK: Watermarking for AI-Generated Content](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18479/) (2024)
- [Image Watermarks are Removable Using Controllable Regeneration from Clean Noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05470/) (2024)
- [Tracing Text Provenance via Context-Aware Lexical Substitution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07873/) (2021)
- [SepMark: Deep Separable Watermarking for Unified Source Tracing and Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.06321/) (2023)
- [DiffusionShield: A Watermark for Copyright Protection against Generative Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04642/) (2023)
- [Supervised GAN Watermarking for Intellectual Property Protection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03466/) (2022)
- [Copyright Protection in Generative AI: A Technical Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02333/) (2024)
- [Proactive Image Manipulation Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15880/) (2022)
- [Attack-Resilient Image Watermarking Using Stable Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.04247/) (2024)
- [A Watermark-Conditioned Diffusion Model for IP Protection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10893/) (2024)
- [CopyRNeRF: Protecting the CopyRight of Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.11526/) (2023)
- [StegaNeRF: Embedding Invisible Information within Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.01602/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Printed and digitally displayed photos have the ability to hide imperceptible digital data that can be accessed through internet-connected imaging systems. Another way to think about this is physical photographs that have unique QR codes invisibly embedded within them. This paper presents an architecture, algorithms, and a prototype implementation addressing this vision. Our key technical contribution is StegaStamp, a learned steganographic algorithm to enable robust encoding and decoding of arbitrary hyperlink bitstrings into photos in a manner that approaches perceptual invisibility. StegaStamp comprises a deep neural network that learns an encoding/decoding algorithm robust to image perturbations approximating the space of distortions resulting from real printing and photography. We demonstrates real-time decoding of hyperlinks in photos from in-the-wild videos that contain variation in lighting, shadows, perspective, occlusion and viewing distance. Our prototype system robustly retrieves 56 bit hyperlinks after error correction - sufficient to embed a unique code within every photo on the internet.