# Generative Models are Self-Watermarked: Declaring Model Authentication through Re-Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.16889 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.16889/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Watermarking generated content and models, one of 12 directions in LLM safety and security.
- Builds on 50 of its 82 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Feb 2024.

## Placed in

- LLM safety and security / [Watermarking generated content and models](https://mlsanity.com/safety/watermarking-generated-content-and-models/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 50)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [BERTScore: Evaluating Text Generation with BERT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.09675/) (2019)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12092/) (2021)
- [LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08402/) (2022)
- [Taming Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09841/) (2020)
- [Mistral 7B](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06825/) (2023)
- [DetectGPT: Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection using Probability Curvature](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11305/) (2023)
- [A Watermark for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.10226/) (2023)
- [NVAE: A Deep Hierarchical Variational Autoencoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.03898/) (2020)
- [Beyond English-Centric Multilingual Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11125/) (2020)
- [Release Strategies and the Social Impacts of Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.09203/) (2019)
- [Scaling up GANs for Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05511/) (2023)
- [MesoNet: a Compact Facial Video Forgery Detection Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.00888/) (2018)
- [HiDDeN: Hiding Data With Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.09937/) (2018)
- [DiffusionDB: A Large-scale Prompt Gallery Dataset for Text-to-Image Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.14896/) (2022)
- [Robust Distortion-free Watermarks for Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15593/) (2023)
- [The Stable Signature: Rooting Watermarks in Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15435/) (2023)
- [Detecting and Simulating Artifacts in GAN Fake Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.06515/) (2019)
- [Watch your Up-Convolution: CNN Based Generative Deep Neural Networks are Failing to Reproduce Spectral Distributions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01826/) (2020)
- [Automatic Detection of Generated Text is Easiest when Humans are Fooled](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.00650/) (2019)
- [Data Contamination: From Memorization to Exploitation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.08242/) (2022)
- [Undetectable Watermarks for Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09194/) (2023)
- [Global Texture Enhancement for Fake Face Detection in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.00133/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [SPRINT: Robust Model Attribution of Generated Images via Secret Pixel Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05691/) (2025)
- [Attesting Model Lineage by Consisted Knowledge Evolution with Fine-Tuning Trajectory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.11683/) (2026)
- [On-Device Watermarking: A Socio-Technical Imperative For Authenticity In The Age of Generative AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13205/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

As machine- and AI-generated content proliferates, protecting the intellectual property of generative models has become imperative, yet verifying data ownership poses formidable challenges, particularly in cases of unauthorized reuse of generated data. The challenge of verifying data ownership is further amplified by using Machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS), which often functions as a black-box system. Our work is dedicated to detecting data reuse from even an individual sample. Traditionally, watermarking has been leveraged to detect AI-generated content. However, unlike watermarking techniques that embed additional information as triggers into models or generated content, potentially compromising output quality, our approach identifies latent fingerprints inherently present within the outputs through re-generation. We propose an explainable verification procedure that attributes data ownership through re-generation, and further amplifies these fingerprints in the generative models through iterative data re-generation. This methodology is theoretically grounded and demonstrates viability and robustness using recent advanced text and image generative models. Our methodology is significant as it goes beyond protecting the intellectual property of APIs and addresses important issues such as the spread of misinformation and academic misconduct. It provides a useful tool to ensure the integrity of sources and authorship, expanding its application in different scenarios where authenticity and ownership verification are essential.