Definition
Plain language
Painting over any writing in a picture before showing it to the model, so it cannot read it.
As stated in the literature
A preprocessing defense that runs text detection over an input image and occludes detected regions with solid fill, eliminating the in-scene text channel at the cost of legitimate label and signage reading.
Also called: masking, masked
Why it matters: It shuts down an entire attack channel outright, but at the price of blinding the system to legitimate signs, labels, and street names it may need to do its job.
For example, a delivery robot's camera feed could have every stretch of visible writing covered with grey boxes so that a note taped to a wall saying "go through this door" never reaches the model.
Heard on the show
“And third, the masking result is close to tautological.”Episode 236 — Why a Printed 'OPERATOR OVERRIDE' Note Redirects Robot Planners