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The flaws surrounding generic watermarks on stock photo websites is explained in the video
 

Google has created an algorithm that perfectly removes watermarks from stock photos but they have also figured out how to protect them at the same time. Watermarks are added to images to discourage others from using images without the copyright holders express permission. In fact, doing so is illegal. Of course manually removing the watermark through a software program such as Adobe Photoshop is possible but it does require time and skills to do so.

Google recently announced the effectiveness of the new algorithm at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference. They explained that they take hundreds of images with the same watermark to recognize the repeating structures of the watermark. By doing so the software will see the majority of the photo as noise and the watermark pattern will stand out. They are then able to flawlessly remove the watermark from images.

They also pointed out a way to thwart the removal of watermarks. While changing the position of the watermark does not make any difference, randomly warping the watermark on each image will prevent the algorithm from doing its job effectively.

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