Google DeepMind Develops Watermarking for AI-Designed Proteins
Google DeepMind published research introducing SynthIDBio, a system that watermarks AI-designed proteins without compromising their function. Built on Google's SynthID technology (used for text/image watermarking), the system works with ProteinMPNN, a popular protein design tool, to embed detectable signals during the amino acid placement process. The watermark is randomly distributed across the protein sequence and can be detected using a cryptographic-like key, even though proteins only use 20 amino acids and have far less 'room' to hide signals than images.