Claude's AI watermarks are coming, but AI detectors aren't going anywhere AI text watermarks and AI writing detectors may sound like the same thing, but they do very different jobs. Regular "Prompt Mode" readers already know that Claude AI watermarks are coming, and that they'll allow us to tell whether a given piece of text was either written or otherwise "processed" by Claude. But here's a question I've been getting a lot lately: With Claude watermarks on the way, do we still need AI writing detectors? Of course, if we asked that questions to GPTZero, Originality.ai, Copyleaks, Turnitin, or any of the popular AI detection services with paid tiers, they'd surely say "yes."

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. AI watermarks are a good idea. Provisions in the EU AI Act for watermarking AI-generated text will likely struggle to keep AI slop purveyors in check. Starting soon, all text that's either generated or "processed" by Claude will bear invisible AI watermarks that can be detected with the right tools, a move made in response to new European Union regulations regarding the disclosure of AI-generated content. Anthropic's wide-ranging pledge to watermark Claude-generated text (including code generated by Claude Code) goes above and beyond the mandates in the EU AI Act, which took effect earlier this month.

Current fail-safe measures designed to ensure material generated by artificial intelligence (AI) is clearly labeled does not meet an appropriate standard and may not be possible with current technology, an expert warns. "There's no interest, and it's difficult to do," Michael Wilkowski, chief technology officer of AI-driven bank compliance platform Silent Eight, told Fox News Digital, stressing that, in his view, it's "actually nearly impossible to discover" if something was AI-generated or not. The current method of applying a watermark at first glance appears more advanced than the traditional method, which would apply a physical mark over the material to make it clear and obvious that the watermark exists. Instead, AI-generated material has an embedded code. AI companies have championed the digital watermark as a means of combating concerns that AI-generated images and videos will end up blurring the line between authentic and generated content, with everyone from OpenAI to Meta pledging to work on the technology, Wired magazine reported.

Soheil Feizi considers himself an optimistic person. But the University of Maryland computer science professor is blunt when he sums up the current state of watermarking AI images. "We don't have any reliable watermarking at this point," he says. "We broke all of them." For one of the two types of AI watermarking he tested for a new study-- "low perturbation" watermarks, which are invisible to the naked eye--he's even more direct: "There's no hope."