5 ms·

That is where their responsibility ends in terms of the EU AI Act. And that is fine and how it should be, no secret watermarks.

by mhitza 14d ago

a3w 14d ago
Watermarks should even be removable "if substantially proofread or altered" in the EU for the text from an LLM, that you verify to be as true as if you wrote it yourself. Not clear is this is a may, shall, or should. It certainly is not a must.
a3w 14d ago
Watermarks cane even be removed, "if substantially proofread" in the EU, law says. For the text from an LLM, that you verify to be as true as if you wrote it yourself. Not clear is this is a may, shall, or should. It certainly is not a must.
- hparadiz 14d ago
  It's not gonna survive my linter in a tightly coupled code base where it's not allowed to write comments but I do resent it for trying.
- WalterGR 14d ago
  (If you post a comment here on HN, then hit the back button, edit your comment, and click “reply” again, you end up posting multiple comments. That’s what’s happened here.)
a3w 14d ago
Watermarks can even be removed, "if substantially proofread" in the EU, law says (for now. There might be a transition period on that). For the text from an LLM, that you verify to be as true as if you wrote it yourself. Not clear if making watermarks removable is a may, shall, or should, according to legislation. It certainly is not a must.
bilalq 14d ago
There's no way text watermarking isn't causing a degradation in writing quality.
- AareyBaba 14d ago
  Text watermarking will surely cause a degradation in quality writing. There's is no text watermarking that doesn't cause a decline in writing quality. Writing quality will surely deteriorate if text watermarking is implemented.
  - chrisra 14d ago
    Maybe this is silly: what about zero-width spaces or other hidden characters? Add them in post-processing, and the response quality doesn't degrade (though rendering etc. might be wonky).
    - throwuxiytayq 14d ago
      Yes, it is silly. Stripping these is about as trivial as removing "this post was written by Claude" appended in plaintext. You could make a clipboard monitor that does this as soon as you CTRL+C, it's a 1-shot prompt. Not to mention that these wonky Unicode chars will break in every other program. Stripping Anthropic's watermarking, however, is more difficult - probably about 2 prompts.
      - mrheosuper 14d ago
        But your average joe won't "setup custom clipboard monitor to auto clip out whitespace". That's why Gemini still include its logo into generated picture even if it's trivial to crop it out
        throwuxiytayq 14d ago
        Ok, sounds like a watermark of “this post was written by Claude” is sufficient then. Or don’t add any at all - the average joe is that Canadian politician whose speech included “here is a more natural-flowing version of that section that sounds more like legislative speech rather than a series of short points.”

That is where their responsibility ends in terms of the EU AI Act. And that is fine and how it should be, no secret watermarks.

by mhitza 14d ago

That is where their responsibility ends in terms of the EU AI Act. And that is fine and how it should be, no secret watermarks.

a3w 14d ago

Watermarks should even be removable "if substantially proofread or altered" in the EU for the text from an LLM, that you verify to be as true as if you wrote it yourself. Not clear is this is a may, shall, or should. It certainly is not a must.

a3w 14d ago

Watermarks cane even be removed, "if substantially proofread" in the EU, law says. For the text from an LLM, that you verify to be as true as if you wrote it yourself. Not clear is this is a may, shall, or should. It certainly is not a must.

hparadiz 14d ago
It's not gonna survive my linter in a tightly coupled code base where it's not allowed to write comments but I do resent it for trying.
WalterGR 14d ago
(If you post a comment here on HN, then hit the back button, edit your comment, and click “reply” again, you end up posting multiple comments. That’s what’s happened here.)

a3w 14d ago

Watermarks can even be removed, "if substantially proofread" in the EU, law says (for now. There might be a transition period on that). For the text from an LLM, that you verify to be as true as if you wrote it yourself. Not clear if making watermarks removable is a may, shall, or should, according to legislation. It certainly is not a must.

bilalq 14d ago

There's no way text watermarking isn't causing a degradation in writing quality.

AareyBaba 14d ago
Text watermarking will surely cause a degradation in quality writing. There's is no text watermarking that doesn't cause a decline in writing quality. Writing quality will surely deteriorate if text watermarking is implemented.
- chrisra 14d ago
  Maybe this is silly: what about zero-width spaces or other hidden characters? Add them in post-processing, and the response quality doesn't degrade (though rendering etc. might be wonky).
  - throwuxiytayq 14d ago
    Yes, it is silly. Stripping these is about as trivial as removing "this post was written by Claude" appended in plaintext. You could make a clipboard monitor that does this as soon as you CTRL+C, it's a 1-shot prompt. Not to mention that these wonky Unicode chars will break in every other program. Stripping Anthropic's watermarking, however, is more difficult - probably about 2 prompts.
    - mrheosuper 14d ago
      But your average joe won't "setup custom clipboard monitor to auto clip out whitespace". That's why Gemini still include its logo into generated picture even if it's trivial to crop it out
      - throwuxiytayq 14d ago
        Ok, sounds like a watermark of “this post was written by Claude” is sufficient then. Or don’t add any at all - the average joe is that Canadian politician whose speech included “here is a more natural-flowing version of that section that sounds more like legislative speech rather than a series of short points.”