ALIEN: Analytic Latent Watermarking for Controllable Generation

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Authors: Liangqi Lei, Keke Gai, Jing Yu, Qi Wu
Cited by: 0

Abstract

Watermarking is a technical alternative to safeguarding intellectual property and reducing misuse. Existing methods focus on optimizing watermarked latent variables to balance watermark robustness and fidelity, as Latent diffusion models (LDMs) are considered a powerful tool for generative tasks. However, reliance on computationally intensive heuristic optimization for iterative signal refinement results in high training overhead and local optima entrapment.To address these issues, we propose an \underline{A}na\underline{l}ytical Watermark\underline{i}ng Framework for Controllabl\underline{e} Generatio\underline{n} (ALIEN). We develop the first analytical derivation of the time-dependent modulation coefficient that guides the diffusion of watermark residuals to achieve controllable watermark embedding pattern.Experimental results show that ALIEN-Q outperforms the state-of-the-art by 33.1\% across 5 quality metrics, and ALIEN-R demonstrates 14.0\% improved robustness against generative variant and stability threats compared to the state-of-the-art across 15 distinct conditions. Code can be available at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/ALIEN/.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques Adversarial Robustness in Machine Learning Generative Adversarial Networks and Image Synthesis

Publication details

Journal / source
arXiv (Cornell University)
Publication date
5 February 2026
Document type
Preprint