We Can Hide More Bits: The Unused Watermarking Capacity in Theory and Practice

Abstract

Despite rapid progress in deep learning–based image watermarking, the capacity of current robust methods remains limited to the scale of only a few hundred bits. Such plateauing progress raises the question: How far are we from the fundamental limits of image watermarking? To this end, we present an analysis that establishes upper bounds on the message-carrying capacity of images under PSNR and linear robustness constraints. Our results indicate theoretical capacities are orders of magnitude larger than what current models achieve. Our experiments show this gap between theoretical and empirical performance persists, even in minimal, easily analysable setups. This suggests a fundamental problem. As proof that larger capacities are indeed possible, we train Chunky Seal, a scaled-up version of Video Seal, which increases capacity 4× to 1024 bits , all while preserving image quality and robustness. These findings demonstrate modern methods have not yet saturated watermarking capacity, and that significant opportunities for architectural innovation and training strategies remain.