For content creators and the companies entrusted with protecting intellectual property, the latest headlines around democratized AI tools will be anxiety-inducing. Reports have been swirling that Google’s latest AI model, Gemini 2.0, includes experimental features that are capable of wiping watermarks from still images—raising serious ethical and legal concerns for the content industry. More dystopian still, with the rapid pace of AI evolution, there is every possibility that these editing tools—capable of removing watermarks with extraordinary efficiency—could soon make the leap from stills to videos, and eventually onto long-form premium content with even more advanced watermarking protections. From a broader perspective, the ability to edit out watermarks underscores the need for stronger digital rights management (DRM) and forensic watermarking techniques…