Summary Embarrassingly Simple Text Watermarks A Solution arxiv.org
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Kyoto University and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology introduce Easymark, a superior text watermark that effectively differentiates between human-written and machine-generated texts.
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Key Points
- Researchers propose a family of simple text watermarks called Easymark to distinguish between human-written and machine-generated texts.
- Easymark injects a watermark into the text without altering its meaning, making it easy to detect if a text was generated from a system that adopted Easymark.
- Easymark is easy to implement, requiring only a few lines of code, and does not require access to Large Language Models (LLMs).
- Easymark achieves higher detection accuracy and BLEU scores compared to existing text watermarking methods.
- The researchers prove an impossibility theorem of perfect watermarking, showing that it is impossible to construct a watermark that cannot be erased without degrading the quality of the text.
- Easymark offers variants for printed and CJK texts, extending its applicability.
- The researchers highlight the trade-off between detection accuracy and erasing difficulty when designing watermarks and suggest exploring tasks with multimodal answers for future research.
Summaries
25 word summary
Kyoto University and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology present Easymark, a text watermark to distinguish human-written and machine-generated texts. Easymark outperforms existing methods.
69 word summary
Kyoto University and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology propose Easymark, a simple text watermark to differentiate human-written and machine-generated texts. Easymark injects a watermark without changing the text's meaning, allowing validation. It outperforms existing methods in accuracy and BLEU scores. An impossibility theorem shows no matter how sophisticated a watermark is, it can be removed. Easymark variants for printed and CJK texts are introduced, expanding its use.
123 word summary
Researchers from Kyoto University and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology have proposed Easymark, a family of simple text watermarks, to differentiate between human-written and machine-generated texts. Easymark injects a watermark into the text without altering its meaning, allowing validators to determine if a text was generated from a system that adopted Easymark or not. It outperforms existing methods in detection accuracy and BLEU scores. The researchers establish an impossibility theorem, showing that no matter how sophisticated a watermark is, a malicious user could remove it. Experiments confirm that Easymark can be reliably detected without degrading scores. Variants of Easymark for printed and CJK texts are introduced, expanding its applicability. The researchers encourage the use of Easymark as a practical compromise solution.
430 word summary
Researchers from Kyoto University and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology have proposed a family of simple text watermarks called Easymark to address the challenge of differentiating between human-written and machine-generated texts. With the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs), this task has become increasingly difficult. Easymark injects a watermark into the text without altering its meaning, allowing validators to determine if a text was generated from a system that adopted Easymark or not.
Easymark is easy to implement, requiring only a few lines of code, and does not require access to LLMs. It outperforms existing text watermarking methods in terms of detection accuracy and BLEU scores. The researchers also establish an impossibility theorem, demonstrating that no matter how sophisticated a watermark is, a malicious user could remove it. This motivates the use of simple watermarks like Easymark.
Experiments conducted with LLM-generated texts confirm that Easymark can be reliably detected without degrading BLEU and perplexity scores. The researchers provide a demonstration of Easymark on their website and encourage readers to try it. Their contributions include proposing Easymark as a family of simple text watermarking methods that maintain text quality and ease of implementation. They also introduce variants of Easymark for printed and CJK texts, expanding its applicability.
The first variant, Whitemark, replaces whitespaces with different codepoints while preserving the appearance of the text. It can be detected by counting the number of specific codepoints in the text and is robust to manual edits. Whitemark is suitable for real-time applications and can also be used for steganography by embedding secret messages in whitespace replacements.
For CJK texts, the researchers propose Variantmark, which utilizes variation selectors of Unicode to create alternating patterns that serve as reliable watermarks.
To address printed texts, the researchers introduce Printmark, which uses ligatures and variations in whitespace lengths to create difficult-to-detect watermarks.
While Whitemark has a limitation that it can be bypassed by replacing all whitespaces with the basic whitespace codepoint, the researchers argue that this limitation is not significant in practice. Therefore, Easymark provides a practical compromise solution that balances simplicity and effectiveness.
The researchers also prove the impossibility of constructing a perfect watermark that cannot be erased without degrading text quality. They suggest exploring tasks with multimodal answers and designing watermarks that change the meaning of the text as promising directions for future research.
In conclusion, Easymark offers a simple yet effective solution to distinguishing between human-written and machine-generated texts. It is easy to implement, achieves high detection accuracy, and does not compromise text quality. The researchers encourage its use by practitioners and researchers.
548 word summary
Researchers from Kyoto University and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology have proposed a family of simple yet effective text watermarks called Easymark. Easymark addresses the problem of distinguishing between human-written and machine-generated texts, which has become increasingly difficult with the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs). The researchers inject a watermark into the text without altering its meaning, allowing validators to detect if a text was generated from a system that adopted Easymark or not.
Easymark is extremely easy to implement, requiring only a few lines of code, and does not require access to LLMs. It achieves higher detection accuracy and BLEU scores than existing text watermarking methods. The researchers also prove an impossibility theorem of perfect watermarking, demonstrating that no matter how sophisticated a watermark is, a malicious user could remove it from the text. This motivates the use of simple watermarks like Easymark.
The researchers conducted experiments with LLM-generated texts and confirmed that Easymark can be reliably detected without degrading BLEU and perplexity scores. They also provide a demonstration of Easymark on their website and encourage readers to try it. The contributions of their paper include the proposal of Easymark as a family of simple text watermarking methods that exploit different Unicode codepoints while maintaining text quality and ease of implementation. They also introduce variants of Easymark for printed and CJK texts, extending its applicability.
The first variant, Whitemark, replaces whitespaces with different codepoints while preserving the appearance of the text. Whitemark does not change the meaning of the text and can be detected by counting the number of specific codepoints in the text. It is robust to manual edits and can be implemented in a streaming manner, making it suitable for real-time applications. Whitemark can also be used as a steganography method by embedding a secret message in the choice of whitespace replacements.
For CJK texts, the researchers propose Variantmark, which utilizes the variation selectors of Unicode. By replacing every other occurrence of a Chinese character with one that has a variation selector, Variantmark creates alternating patterns that can be reliably detected as watermarks.
To address printed texts, the researchers introduce Printmark, which utilizes ligatures and variations in whitespace lengths. Replacing every other occurrence of a ligature with that with ligature creates a watermark that is difficult to detect visually. Similarly, replacing whitespaces with slightly different lengths creates a watermark that can be detected by analyzing the pattern of whitespaces.
While Whitemark has a limitation that it can be bypassed by replacing all whitespaces with the basic whitespace codepoint, the researchers argue that this limitation is not significant in practice. Therefore, Easymark provides a practical compromise solution that balances simplicity and effectiveness.
The researchers also prove an impossibility theorem of perfect watermarking, showing that it is impossible to construct a watermark that cannot be erased without degrading the quality of the text. They suggest exploring tasks with multimodal answers and designing watermarks that change the meaning of the text while remaining reasonable answers to prompts as promising directions for future research.
In conclusion, Easymark offers a simple yet effective solution to the problem of distinguishing between human-written and machine-generated texts. It can be easily implemented and achieves high detection accuracy without compromising text quality. The researchers encourage its use by practitioners and researchers.
838 word summary
Researchers from Kyoto University and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology have proposed a family of simple yet effective text watermarks called Easymark. With the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs), it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between human-written and machine-generated texts, posing a risk of abuse and credibility issues. Easymark addresses this problem by injecting a watermark into the text without altering its meaning, allowing validators to detect if a text was generated from a system that adopted Easymark or not.
Easymark is extremely easy to implement, requiring only a few lines of code, and does not require access to LLMs, making it suitable for user-side implementation when LLM providers do not offer watermarked LLMs. Despite its simplicity, Easymark achieves higher detection accuracy and BLEU scores than existing text watermarking methods. The researchers also prove an impossibility theorem of perfect watermarking, demonstrating that no matter how sophisticated a watermark is, a malicious user could remove it from the text. This motivates the use of simple watermarks like Easymark.
The researchers conducted experiments with LLM-generated texts and confirmed that Easymark can be reliably detected without degrading BLEU and perplexity scores. They also provide a demonstration of Easymark on their website and encourage readers to try it. The contributions of their paper include the proposal of Easymark as a family of simple text watermarking methods that exploit different Unicode codepoints while maintaining text quality and ease of implementation. They also introduce variants of Easymark for printed and CJK texts, extending its applicability.
The first variant, Whitemark, replaces whitespaces with different codepoints while preserving the appearance of the text. Whitemark does not change the meaning of the text and can be detected by counting the number of specific codepoints in the text. It is robust to manual edits and can be implemented in a streaming manner, making it suitable for real-time applications. Whitemark can also be used as a steganography method by embedding a secret message in the choice of whitespace replacements.
For CJK texts, the researchers propose Variantmark, which utilizes the variation selectors of Unicode. Some Chinese characters have variations with the same meaning, and Unicode allows for specifying the variation through special codepoints. By replacing every other occurrence of a Chinese character with one that has a variation selector, Variantmark creates alternating patterns that can be reliably detected as watermarks.
To address printed texts, the researchers introduce Printmark, which utilizes ligatures and variations in whitespace lengths. Ligatures are specific combinations of characters that can be represented by a single codepoint, and replacing every other occurrence of a ligature with that with ligature creates a watermark that is difficult to detect visually. Similarly, replacing whitespaces with slightly different lengths creates a watermark that can be detected by analyzing the pattern of whitespaces.
While Whitemark has a limitation that it can be bypassed by replacing all whitespaces with the basic whitespace codepoint, the researchers argue that this limitation is not significant in practice. Most users are not familiar with Unicode specifications and would not notice or intentionally remove the watermark. Additionally, the ability to erase watermarks is a universal problem in watermarking methods, including more complex ones. Therefore, Easymark provides a practical compromise solution that balances simplicity and effectiveness.
The researchers also prove an impossibility theorem of perfect watermarking, showing that it is impossible to construct a watermark that cannot be erased without degrading the quality of the text. They demonstrate this through a counterexample and explain the implications for watermarking methods. They suggest that exploring tasks with multimodal answers and designing watermarks that change the meaning of the text while remaining reasonable answers to prompts could be promising directions for future research.
In conclusion, Easymark offers a simple yet effective solution to the problem of distinguishing between human-written and machine-generated texts. It can be easily implemented
The document discusses the importance of text watermarking and presents a solution called Easymark, which is a family of simple watermarking methods. The authors highlight the trade-off between detection accuracy and erasing difficulty when designing watermarks. They emphasize the value of Theorem 3.4, which provides guidance on designing theoretically sound watermarks. The authors conducted experiments to compare Easymark with other watermarking methods in terms of BLEU scores, detection accuracy, and text quality. They found that Easymark consistently outperformed other methods and could add a watermark without degrading the text quality. The authors also discuss related work in the field of detecting machine-generated text and highlight the limitations of blackbox detection methods. They explain that whitebox detection methods, such as watermarking, can be more reliable but may harm the quality of the text. However, Easymark overcomes this limitation by providing reliable watermarking without compromising text quality. The authors provide theoretical justifications for Easymark and discuss its practical advantages for users. They also mention the use of Unicode encoding for watermarking and compare their work to existing Unicode-based watermarks. The authors conclude by stating that Easymark is a simple yet strong baseline for watermarking methods and encourage its use by practitioners and researchers.