AquaNota develops technology designed to help creators and platforms maintain attribution, ownership, and authenticity as digital media moves across modern online systems.
We believe creators should not lose control of their work the moment it is uploaded.
Digital media now moves through social platforms, AI systems, compression pipelines, edits, reposts, screenshots, and automated workflows at unprecedented scale.
Traditional ownership mechanisms — visible watermarks, metadata, and platform policies — are often lost or removed as content spreads.
AquaNota is building infrastructure designed to help authenticity and attribution persist with the media itself.
AquaNota develops invisible watermarking and verification technology for images, audio, and video. Our platform is designed to:
Imperceptible signals encoded directly into media — invisible to viewers, persistent to systems.
Redundant encoding helps the signal survive compression, resizing, reposts, and AI-driven transformations.
Attribution, verification, and rights-management workflows are enabled wherever content travels.
Creators retain ownership of their content. Our technology is designed to protect, not extract.
Protection should not interfere with artistic presentation. Signals are imperceptible to viewers and listeners.
Content today moves through AI pipelines, compression systems, reposting, and transformation workflows. Our approach is built around that reality.
We aim to minimise retention of uploaded content and prioritise secure processing practices.
We believe digital media increasingly needs persistent trust and attribution systems — built in, not bolted on.
AquaNota was founded by a Machine Learning researcher and a Lawyer with deep experience in media processing, applied AI infrastructure, and startup development.
The team includes individuals connected to the Pittsburgh technology ecosystem, with academic and professional experience associated with institutions including Carnegie Mellon University and Georgia Institute of Technology.
We started AquaNota after seeing the growing need for persistent authenticity systems in an era of rapidly expanding AI-generated and redistributed media.
AI-generated and redistributed content is changing how media moves online.
Creators, platforms, and organisations increasingly need reliable ways to preserve attribution and authenticity as content is transformed, shared, and reused across digital environments.
We believe invisible, persistent verification systems will become an important part of the future digital ecosystem.
Creators retain full ownership of their content
AquaNota does not claim rights to uploaded media
We are committed to creator-aligned authenticity systems
We aim to minimise unnecessary media retention
Uploaded content is not used to train generative AI systems
“Uploaded content is not used to train generative AI systems.”
No. The signal is designed to be imperceptible — it should not affect the visual quality of your work. Your audience will not notice any difference. On rare occasions, the embedding process may cause a very subtle change in the image data that can be detected with the right tools. If you spot this, please let us know so we can improve our ability to help you! (We will credit you and bonus your account for helping us improve!)
AquaNota's watermarking uses redundant encoding specifically designed to survive common transformations like compression, cropping, resizing, and format conversion.
A detection result from AquaNota provides a structured record showing the mark was present in a file. While it is not a substitute for legal advice, it creates a verifiable record of your claim to the original.
Your files are processed to embed or detect watermarks and are not retained beyond that request. We do not store, share, or use your content for any other purpose.
We can process videos today — audio support is coming soon.
We’re currently working with early creators, photographers, and media partners interested in helping shape the future of digital authenticity.