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Anthropic's ‘watermark’ text adulteration in Claude is a perversion of writing

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Re: Anthropic's ‘watermark’ text adulteration in Claude is a perversion of writing

#471

Post by mangoman »

applicative wrote: post #441
matheusmoreira wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I think the fundamental principle is that this approach messes with the distribution in ways that deviate from the trained model. This. I want the model I'm paying for to be "pure". I don't Anthropic or anyone else messing around with it, especially not for idiotic reasons like facillitating AI stigmatization. The "safety" nonsense is obnoxious enough. They should train the best possible model and let the weigh…

You can’t be serious. The weights for composition are massively degraded by RLVR training for coding

I agree, but thats also learned, and it is done to encourage specific responses for a task, different than applying a mask to the distribution based on a key.

Re: Anthropic's ‘watermark’ text adulteration in Claude is a perversion of writing

#472

Post by mbreese »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #423
ThePhysicist wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would really like to know how their watermarking technique works, and if they can use it to store arbitrary information in the text (I assume they can if only in a limited way). I assume if the text is long enough they could add all kinds of metadata that would then be undetectable as the model that generated the text is the "cryptographic" key that encodes the data. I wonder if you can have another model run over th…

Simple version: In instances wherein the otherwise statistically chosen next word is a "toss-up", watermarking removes the randomness by imposing specific choices, determined by a key. This then becomes a detectable pattern when scanned with the key (stastically—detection itself is probabilistic). > use it to store arbitrary information No additional data is embedded. The range of available data is constrained by the…

From what I’ve read, they won’t be imposing specific choices, but using a different (biased) RNG for those “toss-up” choices. With enough sampling, you could detect if the RNG was biased or not.

Re: Anthropic's ‘watermark’ text adulteration in Claude is a perversion of writing

#473

Post by kccqzy »

Imnimo wrote: post #51

>I want any LLM I use to choose the very best, most precise words at every single decision point. Does the author think he is currently getting T=0 output from Claude? Is he under the impression that T=0 produces the "best" writing? This entire article just seems so detached from the basics of how LLMs work.

I think it is a common misconception for anyone who hasn’t actually tried implementing a LLM to think that there is a best choice of token at each step and that following every locally best choice will lead to a globally “best” writing. This is intuitive yet wrong and perhaps there is no better way to rid oneself of this misconception other than actually implementing a simple LLM.

Re: Anthropic's ‘watermark’ text adulteration in Claude is a perversion of writing

#474

Post by KaiserPro »

Y-bar wrote: post #372
KaiserPro wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> affects their own word choice. exactly. in the same way that printed books affected word choice, so did the radio.

I can't remember any radio determining words or adjusting grammar of the person speaking through it. Neither can I recall there has ever been a moveable type press, laser printer, or inkjet which bastardised the words of authors. These were mediums _through_ which communication happened. Language models, large or small, are not any such medium.

> Neither can I recall there has ever been a moveable type press,

Ah my friend, you are about to fall down a rabbit hole into standardisation of spelling, and the sometimes deadly debates about how to translate latin into the vernacular.

English, as she is written, is a great example.

for the spoken word, BBC/received pronunciation is another. I speak the way I do _because_ of BBC radio. The reason I have the accent I do is because I changed it to fit what the BBC put out, rather than what my local (impenetrable) dialect was.

You have to remember that your language is shaped by those around you when you are young. So if you are in an insular community, it will be reflected in your language. If I was a journalist, or hell, just me, I wouldn't be letting an LLM speak for me. So the bastardisation of my voice is down to me, not the machine.

but again, your argument is against LLMs and globalisation of culture, not finger printing.

Re: Anthropic's ‘watermark’ text adulteration in Claude is a perversion of writing

#475

Post by mbreese »

andy_ppp wrote: post #380
ghrl wrote: post #246

My biggest concern is that checking any text for watermarks requires sending the entire text to Anthropic. And even that is not sufficient, as the text might have been generated with ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Mistral, ... So every check requires sending the text to as many AI providers as offer a watermarking detection API, almost all of which have a very dubious track history with obtaining training data through illici…

Doesn’t this mean Anthropic can accuse anyone of using their AI to write for them?

Is watermarking really watermarking if it can’t be independently verified?

I mean, all of these text content watermarking schemes require the company to assess if the text was AI generated or not. They aren’t going to tell us where the toss-up tokens are or what is in the red vs green pools of words.

Re: Anthropic's ‘watermark’ text adulteration in Claude is a perversion of writing

#476

Post by bccdee »

> “He leaped at the chance” and “He jumped at the opportunity” are very similar sentences expressing the same general sentiment, but they are not the same. The exact words we choose when writing matter. I want any LLM I use to choose the very best, most precise words at every single decision point.

Neither of these is "better" or "more precise"; in fact, LLMs will generally choose randomly between these candidates based on temperature, and SynthID should not distort the output of an LLM any more than the default temperature settings do already.

I agree that those are not the same sentences, but if the difference matters to you, you shouldn't be using an LLM. This difference exists at the level of what sounds better and is more evocative; to an LLM, nothing sounds like or evokes anything. They simply do not write good prose.

Re: Anthropic's ‘watermark’ text adulteration in Claude is a perversion of writing

#477

Post by cubefox »

inigyou wrote: post #333
cubefox wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were talking about text.

Which must also be marked as AI, I hope. (But I doubt that is the law, because the EU is cucked to big businesses interests)

> How would that work? Claude appending " written by AI" to each of its messages? That would both be impractical and useless.

Re: Anthropic's ‘watermark’ text adulteration in Claude is a perversion of writing

#478

Post by whack »

"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning." - Mark Twain

"Just flip a coin to pick a random synonym. Who cares?" - AI Labs

Re: Anthropic's ‘watermark’ text adulteration in Claude is a perversion of writing

#479

Post by adamretter »

I almost never post a comment here, but everything about the author's position is offensive and self entitled. I am so enraged that I can't even beging to formulate a response without resorting to very bad language. It's sad, because until now I respected the author. But clearly, and sadly, he has been afflicted with AI brain rot, and is likely in some stage of withdrawal. I wish him a speedy and safe recovery.

Re: Anthropic's ‘watermark’ text adulteration in Claude is a perversion of writing

#480

Post by SilasX »

voidUpdate wrote: post #199

> "The exact words we choose when writing matter." Then write your own damn text if you care about the exact wording so much

OpenAI released a feature that lets you tweak ChatGPT output to sound more human and like yourself and correct inaccuracies:

http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2026/04/open-ai-strikes-ba...

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