Adversarial robust image steganography against lossy JPEG compression

•This is the first work that introduces adversarial mechanism into robust steganography to improve the security of steganography. Adversarial dither modulation algorithm is proposed to guide the dither directions via the signs and magnitudes of cover gradients calculated from pre-trained steganalyzer.•According to “Matching Robust” or “Upward Robust” scene, we select proper embedding elements to balance the robustness against JPEG compression and steganography security.•Extensive experiments show that the proposed adversarial robust steganography could significantly improve the steganography security and maintain strong robustness.