Can Watermarks Survive Translation? On the Cross-lingual Consistency of Text Watermark for Large Language Models

Understand

Text watermarking technology aims to tag and identify content produced by large language models (LLMs) to prevent misuse.

• In this study, we introduce the concept of cross-lingual consistency in text watermarking, which assesses the ability of text watermarks to maintain their effectiveness after being translated into other languages.
• Preliminary empirical results from two LLMs and three watermarking methods reveal that current text watermarking technologies lack consistency when texts are translated into various languages.
• Based on this observation, we propose a Cross-lingual Watermark Removal Attack (CWRA) to bypass watermarking by first obtaining a response from an LLM in a pivot language, which is then translated into the target language.