TextSeal2: Distortion-Free LLM Watermarking with Copula Mixing and Memoryless Races

We present TextSeal2, a distortion-free watermark for large language models that keeps its signal under speculative decoding: tokens that replace rejected drafts remain watermarked with the same keys, and the acceptance rate is unchanged. It also preserves output diversity and adds no measurable inference latency. Its predecessor, TextSeal, restores diversity in the Gumbel-max scheme by routing each token to one of two keys via a coin flip. This is suboptimal because the detector averages the scores from both keys without knowing which key was used. TextSeal2 instead merges two or more keys into a single virtual key and couples it to fresh noise through AutoMark's Gaussian copula. Any number of keys, including publicly shared keys, can be merged this way without diluting detection. Under speculative decoding, TextSeal2 verifies keyed drafts with one more exponential race, run on the leftovers of the draft races. By memorylessness, this race reproduces block verification, so the output follows the target model exactly. We evaluate TextSeal2 on three LLMs. At equal output token diversity, TextSeal2 detects 8 to 22 percentage points more 100-token answers than TextSeal at a false-positive rate of $10^{-3}$, and is comparable to textGrain while requiring no post-logits optimization. Under speculative decoding, it detects 18 and 22 percentage points more 200-token answers than TextSeal and textGrain, respectively, at the same acceptance rate.

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
arXiv (Cornell University)
Published
2026-10-29
DOI
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2610.40613
Primary Topic
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Type
preprint
Controls
|||
ALL TIME
JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEP
OCT
preprint

TextSeal2: Distortion-Free LLM Watermarking with Copula Mixing and Memoryless Races

Valeriu Lacatusu, Alexandre Mourachko, Tom Sander, Sylvestre-Alvise Rebuffi et al.
arXiv (Cornell University)
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
preprint

TextSeal2: Distortion-Free LLM Watermarking with Copula Mixing and Memoryless Races

Valeriu Lacatusu, Alexandre Mourachko, Tom Sander, Sylvestre-Alvise Rebuffi, Hady Elsahar, Pierre Fernandez, Hongyan Chang, Tomáš Souček, Tuan Tran, Surya Parimi, Jiaxin Shi, Itai Gat, Jason Park, Haiming Bao
preprint en

Abstract

We present TextSeal2, a distortion-free watermark for large language models that keeps its signal under speculative decoding: tokens that replace rejected drafts remain watermarked with the same keys, and the acceptance rate is unchanged. It also preserves output diversity and adds no measurable inference latency. Its predecessor, TextSeal, restores diversity in the Gumbel-max scheme by routing each token to one of two keys via a coin flip. This is suboptimal because the detector averages the scores from both keys without knowing which key was used. TextSeal2 instead merges two or more keys into a single virtual key and couples it to fresh noise through AutoMark's Gaussian copula. Any number of keys, including publicly shared keys, can be merged this way without diluting detection. Under speculative decoding, TextSeal2 verifies keyed drafts with one more exponential race, run on the leftovers of the draft races. By memorylessness, this race reproduces block verification, so the output follows the target model exactly. We evaluate TextSeal2 on three LLMs. At equal output token diversity, TextSeal2 detects 8 to 22 percentage points more 100-token answers than TextSeal at a false-positive rate of $10^{-3}$, and is comparable to textGrain while requiring no post-logits optimization. Under speculative decoding, it detects 18 and 22 percentage points more 200-token answers than TextSeal and textGrain, respectively, at the same acceptance rate.

arXiv (Cornell University)
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
AI Navigator

Ask Laika to Summarize, Analyze, and Connect papers live on the map.

Summarize Papers & Methodologies

Extract key findings, datasets, and comparative methods across publications.

Benchmark Rankings & Visual Analytics

Rank top research institutions, authors, funders, topics, and journals by Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) and paper volume with instant charts.

Connect Distant Disciplines

Bridge topological clusters on the map to find hidden collaborative intersections.

Laika access coming soon