Thoughts on AI watermarking

Claude is now watermarking its text outputs using a statistical token-choice watermark. According to what the AI told me, when generating the next token, it often has a choice between options that have similar meaning. It applies a statistical bias for some words at certain places over other words, which it’s able to identify over a text that’s long enough. Going over a paragraph, it can see if these equal-meaning words match the formula. Even if you change a word or rewrite a sentence, the watermark will persist in all the other words and sentences. It’s not hiding in the em-dashes and single quotes.

I have mixed feelings about this.

One of the ways I use AI for written text is for grammatical improvements. Last thing I want is AI claiming that my text is AI-generated just because it fixed grammar. I also use it to translate my Goodreads reviews, which I usually write and publish in Bulgarian first, and then translate, expand, and share here in English. The act of auto-translation doesn’t make the text AI. So, I very much don’t want AI to claim ownership over texts and experiences that are my own. Not that it matters all that much, but I still would rather not have these watermarks anywhere.

On the other hand, the AI content has expanded so much that it’s very difficult to distinguish a good-quality human text from AI slop. Many of the YouTube videos by popular influencers watched over the last month felt like a real human is reading from a slop script. For reasons I have difficulties specifying, I would like zero percent exposure to AI slop during free time. I don’t want to read AI books (increasingly prevalent), I don’t want to watch AI slop influencers, AI slop animation. I don’t even want CGI anymore.

I’ve mentally accepted that AI belongs to certain spaces, like work automation and coding, but doesn’t belong to others, like personal life. I’m not willing to succumb to the vision that AI should see and hear everything I do, remember it, and then use it. This vision feels like people with Meta glasses in a public bathroom.

And every conversation you’ve ever had in your life, every book you’ve ever read, every email you’ve ever read, everything you’ve ever looked at is in there, plus connected to all your data from other sources. And your life just keeps appending to the context

— Sam Altman, source

And I’m mixing the subjects a bit here but if AI is going to watermark its improvements to my blog posts, there will be no AI improvements here, and you’ll be stuck with bad grammar and other signs of character 🙂