GoKawiilYou might soon be able to know for sure if something came from a human being or from Claude. Anthropic said this week that text and files generated by its family of AI models will be watermarked to let consumers know. The change will allow the company to comply with EU regulations governing the transparency of AI use.
The EU’s Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-generated Content requires companies that provide and deploy AI systems to inform customers when they are interacting with AI and to include watermarks on AI content. Consumers also must know when they’re exposed to deepfakes and emotion-recognition and biometric-categorization tools.
Watermarking — an authentication process that originated in Italy in the 13th century — is entirely different for AI content. The AI system can automatically embed markers in text indicating that the content originated from AI and not a human. Examples could be different spacing between words and numbers, word sequencing and other invisible signals that remain with the text even if the person copies and pastes it across different platforms. Readers can’t see these markers, but computer systems can.
In its announcement this week, Anthropic said Claude models launched on or after Aug. 2 would include watermarking. That includes content created by Claude through the API, Claude, Claude Code, Claude Cowork and Claude Tag. Watermarking will apply to all Claude-generated content wherever the AI system is offered, not just the EU.
Anthropic said it would share details on detecting the watermarks in the future.
A representative for Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment and clarification.
What will be watermarked
Claude will include watermarks in text and files — including .svg, .png, or .jpg — that it generates. With text, the watermarks will be signals embedded into letters and words that will be invisible to readers but visible to machine systems. Even if the text is copied and pasted from text editors such as Windows Notepad or MacOS’s TextEdit, the watermarks will remain. The marks also might not be eliminated through human editing, either.
“Watermarking will be applied at the model level, which means it will be present no matter which Claude product or surface the text comes from,” the company said.
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