Anthropic Explains Its Watermark System as Some Claude Users Loudly Revolt

“The difference between watermarked and un-watermarked text will not be distinguishable to readers,” Anthropic says.

In a blog post on Friday, Anthropic elaborated on its controversial watermarking system, announced earlier this week as an effort to comply with the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act. Watermarking will make it harder for users to get away with pretending they wrote AI-generated text.

User backlash

It may be too late to preserve Anthropic’s relationships with some outraged users, who have, it appears, already canceled their subscriptions. Posts on X show many supposed paying Claude users claiming to have cut off ties.

• Math and AI influencer John Ennis is one. He posted a screenshot of his cancellation Saturday, and cited Anthropic’s “ridiculous watermark idea” as a cause.
• There are countless other X users claiming to have canceled because of watermarking. “This is bullsh*t” wrote one.
• Another called Anthropic the r-slur in response to one of its X posts about watermarking.
• “Why should I, being a non EU citizen watermark my work generated by a paid subscription of Claude?” asks another.

How the watermark works

Anthropic’s explanation does make fascinating reading if you’re not a cryptographer and you imagined that the only way to watermark text is by, for instance, crud