Both. Changing an image is done all the time prior to publishing them. In fact, no image you ever see on the internet is a raw sensor output. They are all modified in some manner. The images processed using this method look the same to every person and computer that views them. That’s very different from DRM which encrypts things and prevents access to unprivileged users.

This is effectively the equivalent of someone doing really crappy image processing. As other commenters have mentioned, it does alter how images look to humans as well as machines, and it can be “mitigated” through additional processing techniques.