Model Ownership Protection for Healthcare Consumer Electronics in Federated Edge Learning

With the rising demand for intelligent services and privacy protection in consumer artificial intelligence (AI), federated edge learning has emerged as a beacon for privacy-preserving distributed machine learning. This non-centralized approach offers distinct data privacy advantages, making it especially suitable for applications with strict privacy policies, such as consumer-centric healthcare systems. However, consumer electronics/devices in federated edge learning might unlawfully violate model ownership by duplicating or distributing models. Another concern is that a central server, if compromised, can become a conduit for model leakage, whether for profit motives or due to external intrusions, thus exacerbating the model ownership violation. To our knowledge, few works have focused on model ownership protection for federated edge learning in the consumer-centric healthcare domain. In this paper, we introduce a federated model ownership protection (FedMOP) approach. FedMOP is a model ownership safeguard and a formidable fortress built upon two core innovations. First, FedMOP can swiftly embed and replace watermarks during local training, allowing for the accurate identification and subsequent flagging of deceitful consumer devices. Second, FedMOP ensures that the server only accesses encrypted versions of the federated model, keeping the model a secret. Extensive evaluations demonstrate the robustness and effectiveness of FedMOP. We hope that FedMOP can light the way for surmounting similar ethical challenges in the broader realm of consumer-edge AI.