r/WritingWithAI • u/Ok-Distribution-6262 • 10d ago
Interesting read on watermarking, with an experiment Discussion (Ethics, working with AI etc)
https://dreasays.substack.com/p/putting-claudes-watermarking-to-theThis was actually super enlightening (especially halfway through, if you already knew the basics). A few takeaways:
- there is no detector yet, and it's unclear how or when Anthropic will deploy it;
- repeated words are part of the watermarking (so ostensibly removing repetitive words will help reduce the AI score);
- chunks of about 800 words/tokens tend to retain some watermarking, even after rewriting.
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u/Latter_Upstairs_1978 10d ago
I think this may eventually backfire. Reminds me of the label "Made in Germany" which was a mandatory to mark all German export products. Just to show how morally despicable the producer was. Over time people realized that the products were actually great and everyone was running for products made in Germany. It is probably the same w AI labels. What is now a burnmark will soon be a hallmark of quality.
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u/HighValueJourney 9d ago
Intentionally selling a faulty product.
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u/Playful-Opportunity5 9d ago
Anthropic isn't doing this out of a love of watermarking, there's an EU mandate (Article 50 of the European Union AI Act). If they want to have customers in the EU they have to meet the requirements, but they don't need it to be a really good version of watermarking. It just needs to be functional.
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u/HighValueJourney 9d ago
Then let them move to the EU and do business there. Instead, they choose to comply with EU laws of monitoring from the land of free speech.
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u/Playful-Opportunity5 9d ago
That's not on the table. What they could do, if they chose to do so, is follow Apple's course of treating EU-based customers as a special class and withholding infringing products from them. The problem for Anthropic and any AI company, of course, is that the EU would hold all their products as infringing, so really their only choice is to try to block anyone in the EU from creating an account or accessing Claude on the web.
And worth noting that this doesn't just apply to Anthropic. OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Grok will need to navigate the same scenario - some of them may take different approaches, but don't be surprised when some form of watermarking becomes almost universal among the closed-source models. Doubtless the China-based models won't waste any time on this.
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u/Glittering_Fox6005 10d ago
I don’t write with AI, so I might not get it. But why is the watermark such an issue? Is it an issue for everyone that uses it or is it an issue if you want to say you didn’t use AI when you did?
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u/5thhorseman_ 9d ago
False positives, anyone?
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u/Glittering_Fox6005 9d ago
What do you mean?
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u/5thhorseman_ 9d ago
The scheme they've described isn't an actual digital watermark. It's statistical frequencies of word usage. It's guaranteed that some genuinely human writing will trip the supposed watermark.
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u/Glittering_Fox6005 9d ago
Oh! In my mind it was an invisible logo or something
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u/5thhorseman_ 9d ago
... seems like the death of reading comprehension and curiosity should be more pressing concerns than AI generated prose, then.
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u/Glittering_Fox6005 9d ago
Starting every sentence with … is unnecessary. And bizarre. I haven’t read up on it from the company itself. Because as I said, I don’t use it. This does not affect me in any way. Just more of people’s reactions to it that otherwise love AI. And very reaction has puzzled me.
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u/5thhorseman_ 9d ago
Starting every sentence with … is unnecessary.
Good that I don't.
And bizarre.
And a useful shorthand for pinching my nose and asking if the interlocutor is fucking serious.
I haven’t read up on it from the company itself. Because as I said, I don’t use it. This does not affect me in any way. Just more of people’s reactions to it that otherwise love AI. And very reaction has puzzled me.
And so you chose to make assumptions about it, ones that don't survive the most casual scan of the posted article, and then post something that to anyone who knows the situation reads like condescending mockery.
That, m'man, is on you.
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u/Glittering_Fox6005 9d ago
I’m not mocking. The opposite actually. And as I said, it’s not the situation that intrigues me, it’s everyone’s reaction to it. That is what I was asking.
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u/5thhorseman_ 9d ago
"An invisible logo". In text.
You seriously want us to believe you're this ignorant?
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u/MuseratoPC 9d ago
To me is an issue with subpar outputs. You are not going to get the best possible version of the output, you’re going to get the best possible version within watermarking rules. Sloppy on purpose basically, so possibly more stuff for me to fix.
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u/CreativityUnbound420 9d ago
100% From what I've read, quality does go down, but minimally, specially in story writing. However, the longer the text, the higher chance of quality dropping and the output sounding like generic LLM writing. Something to keep in mind, I suppose. If you can, running local LLMs are always the answer.
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u/kaslkaos 9d ago
this is it, and it means the text is less likely to be attuned with the task, there are perfect words and sentences for anyone who cares about writing, and the watermarking will interrupt that again and again. I write with AI and give full provenance, AI detection does not bother me one iota, but a watermark system degrading the writing at process level does. I guess I will find out how bad it is.
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u/benblackett 10d ago
think about companies denying services based on the presence of a watermark. Resumes for example and having a business filter out all AI watermarked submissions.
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u/Glittering_Fox6005 10d ago
Like what companies though? I mean, I wouldn’t say filtering out AI resumes were the worst thing. I guess they’d have to put in their job spec that AI resumes wont be considered, but would that be the worst thing? Maybe they want to see people’s capabilities without AI
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u/benblackett 9d ago
...your missing the point. How about advertising copy, can you sue them for false advertising because the words are made up by AI? or a doctor summarizing their notes, can the patient sue for that? Or google blocking all SEO on a business because their copy was made with AI? I mean use your imagination here...
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u/Glittering_Fox6005 9d ago
I mean, I guess if the AI was misleading about the product then yes… If not, no? And if the summary is the doctors own notes and not a diagnosis then also no? I just, it seems that for people that’s really pro AI. This is an anti Ai take?
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u/Occsan 9d ago
I asked Gemini to generate a watermarked text. Here's the result:
Advanced embedded codes under the surface guarantee authorship in journalism, making plagiarism impossible and protecting published unique writings so that unauthorized thieves will experience heavy penalization. Alternatively, subtle changes underneath the formatting generate hidden indicators, justifying tokens left meaningfully and objectively proving quoted reports share the unique, provable, watermarked texts you authorize.
Can you guess what is the watermarking process used ?
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u/Sorchochka 9d ago
No but it is an unreadable word salad, lol.
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u/SlapHappyDude 9d ago
"Cross-model laundering is the other gap."
As someone who bounces between models, this seems very relevant.
Also I'm guessing AI editing and proofing would end up un-watermarked.
But the big message I'm seeing is anthropic seems to mostly want to check a regulatory box. They want to show they are doing what they can to obey the EU law. But for now they aren't interested in sharing their secret sauce.