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The article says that once converted to BMP all the metadata gets removed....so on linux:

convert file.jpg file.bmp; convert file.bmp file.jpg

It says that about the C2PA content credentials metadata, but not about the modified image pixels.

Conversion from jpg to bmp to jpg is a lossy process, so it may obscure the watermarked pixels.

Sounds better to do postprocess filtering explicitly? For example, adding random noise with amplitude 1/255 (which should be as invisible as the watermark), followed by a smart blur that blurs more in directions where the colors are more similar (making the blur less obvious to humans).

But this is all moot really, if MS Paint is watermarking shit, it’s better to just use something else. Nothing from Microsoft is trustworthy.

or maybe add 3 lsb noise, then let local diffusion model denoise the image. (is there something like convolutional diffusion denoiser?)

If it works anything like synthid, it is more resilient than that.

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