Watermarking
Invisible. Persistent. Recoverable.
Verbitas embeds an imperceptible watermark at the moment of signing. If the C2PA manifest is stripped, the watermark survives — and we recover the provenance record from it.
Why watermarking matters: Metadata is easy to strip. A JPEG re-save removes EXIF. A screenshot removes everything. The watermark is embedded in the signal itself — in pixel values, audio samples, or video frames — and survives those transformations.
Supported modalities
| Modality | Engine | Readiness | Survivability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Image | Adobe TrustMark | Production | JPEG 50% quality, resize to 25%, crop 30%, format conversion |
| Audio | Meta AudioSeal | Public Beta | MP3 128kbps re-encode, 10dB noise, pitch shift ±2 semitones |
| Video | Meta VideoSeal | Private Beta (CPU) / Public Beta (GPU) | H.264 re-encode, 25% crop, 2x speed change |
| Text | Google SynthID-Text | Experimental | Generation-time hook only; no post-hoc embedding |
Quality impact
Watermarking changes the content slightly. For images: PSNR typically 42–47 dB, SSIM 0.995–0.999 (imperceptible). For audio: SNR impact below the threshold of human perception. Quality targets are enforced in CI — a regression fails the build.
Payload format
The watermark encodes a 96-bit opaque identifier that maps to a manifest record in the Verbitas soft-binding index. Not readable by humans. Not PII. The mapping from watermark ID to manifest is stored in Postgres and subject to GDPR erasure.
Honest about limitations
- — Extreme adversarial transformations (full image regeneration, very heavy compression) can degrade the watermark below recovery threshold.
- — Selective region removal — if the watermarked region is entirely cropped out, the payload may be unrecoverable from that region.
- — We never claim "always detectable" or "100% accurate." We publish robustness benchmarks and gate them in CI.
Provenance that survives distribution.
Invisible watermarks included in every plan, every modality.