Anthropic’s AI Watermark: A Subtle Detectability Trick That Upsets Writers

Anthropic plans to watermark Claude's outputs by subtly adjusting word choice using a secret key, so the text is detectable as AI-generated without any visible changes. The company claims this won't affect quality, but the article argues the move shows a broader disregard for the craft of writing, treating words as fungible. It cites Google’s SynthID research and critics, and frames watermarking as a regulatory response that raises questions about AI’s role in mimicking human writing.