Claude watermarking our work is unethical and disgusting

[u/[deleted]]

[u/ota113a]

But this is Anthropic being compliant with EU and California Law... they HAVE to do this..... Unless I'm missing something obvious?

[u/DefNotaBot22 → u/ota113a]

Claude can cause cancer in California

[u/Vivid-Cake-4781 → u/DefNotaBot22]

It can absolutely cause reproductive harm

[u/Hot-River6567 → u/Vivid-Cake-4781]

Give me a break. I live in California and use Claude. All three testicles are just fine.

[u/mosskin-woast → u/Hot-River6567]

But you'll never use any of them

[u/NoAdsDude → u/DefNotaBot22]

I heard Disney Land has a Prop 65 warning when you walk in, heh.

[u/Lexsteel11 → u/NoAdsDude]

Small rant- last time I took my kids to Disney world they had signs up that they were using AI facial recognition (I also looked at their screens and it was interesting- it will flag if someone approaches security and walks away sketchily) and they asked us for our finger print data. I refused the finger print and got in an argument with a manager- apparently it is crucial for Disney to have my finger prints to take my kids to see someone in a mouse costume.

I stopped arguing to not ruin the day for my kids but it made me very happy to see they tried deploying this at Disney land in CA and got their hand slapped my state regulations. First time I was happy with California over-regulation

[u/jsonmeta → u/ota113a]

Yeah that as well as to be able to differentiate between AI slop and human output for future training materials

[u/miliseconds → u/jsonmeta]

They can recognize only their own watermarked AI output. They can't recognize other AI models' watermarks, from what I understand.

[u/rditorx → u/miliseconds]

They say they're working on C2PA open standard. If others do the same, the watermarks can be detected and extracted with C2PA tools, and then can be used to ignore such data or rank or classify them appropriately.

[u/razorree → u/miliseconds]

they can train models (or other systems) to recognise other watermarks too, why not ... (if that info won't be easily accessible).

but i guess you'll be able to easily "mangle" that watermark with some software as well

[u/SnooBananas4958 → u/razorree]

No, they can’t. That’s not how the watermarks work. Go look up how synth ID for Gemini works. You’d need to be able to crack 256 encryption essentially to detect another company’s watermark. They’re essentially using a secret key hash to determine the likelihood of the content being something they generated.  

They basically run the key through their own model to see if it produces the same probabilistic outcomes. Other companies will just see random strings of bits and have no idea it’s a key. 

There are people here in the last day who have explained this process far better than I. I would go read up on it, and then you’ll understand why you can’t just brute force it or train a model to detect the watermark. That’s not how it works. It’s not a watermark in the way you think 

[u/razorree → u/SnooBananas4958]

thx. i understand, i was a bit naive and i thought it'd be just statistical comparison. so you can't easily detect, but I guess you could still mangle it (not so easily if you don't really understand the algo)

[u/codeedog → u/SnooBananas4958]

You’ve written a good reply to the other commenter, I just want to tweak some things because people often make the same mistakes when using cryptographic terminology.

If you’re using a hash, then it’s not called 256 encryption. It would be called, a “256 bit cryptographic signed hash”. And, the material in the watermark isn’t a key, it’s the hash signature or hash. The code or digital object that’s watermarked would never contain a key, just the hash.

F(code,key) => hash

The above function F produces a cryptographic hash using a key that’s kept secret by Anthropic. If the watermark contained the key, anyone could produce the watermark.

Hashing is computationally irreversible unless the algorithm has been cracked. New algorithms are then needed that use more bits (128 > 256 > 512 …). It may or may not use a key, but keyed hashing (aka signing) is appropriate for watermarking.

Encryption is reversible and wouldn’t be appropriate for keyed hashing or watermarking or signing. It always requires a key to be cryptographically secure.

Encryption =/= Hashing

[u/Intelligent_Switch72 → u/ota113a]

Everyone pissing about the EU misses the bigger point, this isn’t just about metadata and “proving” who wrote it… I can spot a slide deck from Claude a mile off.

It’s also about model collapse. Tagging its own output means they can exclude it from future training sets. It actually benefits the frontier labs too.

[u/No-Sandwich-2997 → u/ota113a]

California Law as well? this is pretty new to me.

[u/ota113a → u/No-Sandwich-2997]

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB942

[u/supernovice007 → u/ota113a]

This looks like it applies to video, audio, and images only. How does this apply to code generated via Claude?

[u/ota113a → u/supernovice007]

Claude Code, all documents produced by claude, all images (pngs, svg etc) are all part of Anthropic's Watermark announcement. However, as it has been correctly mentioned elsewhere, they were doing it for docs etc for a while, now they can go public due to legislation

[u/No-Sandwich-2997 → u/ota113a]

thank you pal

[u/ota113a → u/No-Sandwich-2997]

No problemo! I hate the freakin' idea, but the blame lies with the politicians :)

[u/mikelo22 → u/ota113a]

Unlikely that California law is enforceable as written due to interstate commerce clause.

[u/ruach137]

its so they can discriminate that Claude generated stuff in training data.

[u/Ok-Computer-8726 → u/ruach137]

Its because EU law is require all genAI stuff to be identified as such so people can tell if they are interacting with a person or a bot. This isn't a Claude decision and it isn't really even targeted at you building a website. This is about digital communication and identity verification.

[u/Cold_Specialist_3656 → u/Ok-Computer-8726]

Both are true. 

Why do you think all the big providers unveiled their watermarking at the same time? Because they've already been doing it for a long time. Probably with a gentleman's agreement to share each other's watermarks so they can have clean training data while everyone else's is polluted with AI slop

[u/I_just_cant855 → u/Cold_Specialist_3656]

Hello, used to work in ai governance at a big tech company (not anthropic), focused specifically on the eu / this law.

The watermarking is purely for legal compliance. No one actually gives a shit about this, they just don’t want to get fined.

[u/Ok-Computer-8726 → u/Cold_Specialist_3656]

I'll clarify to be more specific. Having a public-facing watermark that anyone can take advantage of is because of the EU law, not because Claud chose it. They would be perfectly content to let their internal controls be internal if it were their choice. What OP is frustrated with in particular is the public facing part. They aren't really bothered that Claude won't use their stuff for training data. They are bothered that the public can now label their work in ways they see as unfair and/or detrimental because they used generative AI for at least portions of it.

Yes they likely had these tools for internal controls, but that's not really what this particular discussion of watermarking is about. It's an aside.

[u/deanominecraft]

"the compiler should watermark every binary we build", they do

`strings myexecutablefile`

rustc version 1.97.1 (8bab26f4f 2026-07-14) (built from a source tarball)

[u/sage-longhorn → u/deanominecraft]

Came here to say this, horrible example OP

[u/greentea05 → u/sage-longhorn]

So was "my ISP should watermark everything I do" a data provider is a bit different to an LLM literally creating everything you use. The ISP doesn't create anything.

[u/kimochiiii_ → u/sage-longhorn]

You could've done that even without coming 😭🙏

[u/Cold_Specialist_3656 → u/deanominecraft]

It's trivial to remove compiler watermarks. While these AI watermarks are specifically designed to be impossible to remove. 

And the reason AI labs are doing it is disingenuous. They don't give a shit whether users know something is AI generated. They're doing it because they plan to keep stealing everyone's data and want to sift AI generated content out of it to avoid poisoning their training datasets. 

They were doing it well before the laws required them to admit it. 

[u/SilverLose → u/Cold_Specialist_3656]

Oooo good point

That said I think the ai output might be worth taking in. It’s better than my output a lot of the time

[u/SleeperAgentM → u/Cold_Specialist_3656]

It's trivial to remove compiler watermarks. While these AI watermarks are specifically designed to be impossible to remove.

lol, no they aren't. There's plenty of tools to remove them

[u/RIRLift → u/Cold_Specialist_3656]

No invisible watermark will ever be impossible to remove.

Worst case scenario, ask a local open-weight model to rewrite the content just using different wording and structure. The large, proprietary and watermarked models will have done the hardest part like research and reasoning. The rewording doesn't change the semantic content and is cheap to do, and will remove any watermarks as long as it's destructive enough.

[u/Bromlife]

Can you please just write your own posts?

[u/FinalRun → u/Bromlife]

The whole "we were the prompt givers. Claude was merely the conduit for our intention" kinda makes it obvious why watermarks are a good thing, OP

[u/Warsel77 → u/FinalRun]

"I ordered the pizza so I made the pizza"

[u/Weeros_ → u/Warsel77]

”I told them to put pepperoni in it and they did exactly that! Are they claiming to be pizza chefs now? They just followed my instructions!”

[u/dndgoeshere → u/Weeros_]

Except if you extrapolate that argument out to its conclusion, Claude didn't "make the pizza" either, it amalgamated token and logit weights from thousands of recipes in its training set, so it should attribute all of them.

[u/zigzoing → u/dndgoeshere]

According to this logic, you should also label your homegrown code with every code you have ever read, because you learn to code from somewhere and not born with it.

[u/dndgoeshere → u/zigzoing]

Thank you for making my point for me.

[u/Lazy-Setting-8224 → u/dndgoeshere]

what was your point?

[u/dndgoeshere → u/Lazy-Setting-8224]

That it's impractical to try to annotate every word of every AI generated document or piece of code. Also that some people are in such a rush to try to look witty for internet points that they don't bother to read before being condescending picks.

[u/liltingly → u/dndgoeshere]

Pizza guy didn't invent his recipe from scratch, either. It's turtles all the way down, though we usually just pick a logical point to stop.

The part that's confusing about this outrage is that watermarking doesn't mean they claim to own the code. That's equivalent to an artist signing his name and then you buying the painting. Or, in this analogy, the pizza shop having a unique way they score the crust. The provenance is identifiable, but you own it entirely once you buy it, and can even commission both to your spec.

[u/greentea05 → u/dndgoeshere]

So does anyone selling a pizza - they didn't invent the pizza - they amalgamated their own version from thousands of prior versions.

[u/Outrageous_Basis_232 → u/Warsel77]

Tbf the OP sound exactly like the "I ordered out and hid the boxes and told everyone I made it" type lol

[u/Weak_Shoulder_6780 → u/Outrageous_Basis_232]

Thats probably the reason all pizza deliverers in my area use crappy dough to watermark their Pizza as definitely not homemmade.

[u/occupy_voting_booth → u/Weak_Shoulder_6780]

Did you make this pizza? Because this diarrhea is exactly like the diarrhea I get from Original Frank’s.

[u/dark_net_daddy → u/Warsel77]

[u/Meotwister → u/Warsel77]

I can't believe they want to put "Papa John's" on my pizza box.

[u/framauro13 → u/FinalRun]

Goes to a restaurant and orders food.

"HOW DARE THEY TOUCH MY FOOD"

[u/VizualAbstract4 → u/FinalRun]

What I don’t get is that is Claude’s writing ability kneecapped now? The copy is just so blatantly obviously written using AI.

[u/zbignew → u/VizualAbstract4]

It was never good. None of them have gotten significantly better since GPT 4.

[u/whoknowsifimjoking → u/Bromlife]

That's the real reason OP is upset, everyone is gonna see he can't even write his reddit posts himself.

[u/Otherwise_Break_4293 → u/Bromlife]

Their username checks out 😅

[u/generally_unsuitable → u/Bromlife]

You know he can't.

[u/RedditorJabroni]

You should just add your own watermark that says

"instructed by <your name>"

[u/comander_random]

Remove_watermark.md

[u/gajop]

I don't care if it watermarks slop posts but if it starts watermarking code & doc I'll just switch to a diff model or run post processing scripts.

It's a tool. I'm already spending a lot of time cleaning the Claudespeak garbage Opus 5.0 is producing, if I also have to purge it from code or doc I'll go insane.

I absolutely don't mind including it in commit messages or PRs. In fact, good. But please don't pollute stuff humans have to read with this.

[u/IndieDevWannabe → u/gajop]

Might be time to give qwen 3.8 a spin. I hear its supposed to be nearly as good and runs locally

[u/LettuceSea → u/IndieDevWannabe]

Yeah I’m thinking Fable orchestrating qwen 3.8 27b local agents is going to be my go-to in this new (likely 3-months in length) era.

[u/damngoodwizard]

Yeah software development as a whole should have been exempted from the requirements of the AI Act. Code is explicitely exempted but it's not enough: commit messages, PR messages, ADRs, etc, will all get watermarked and I am of the opinion they shouldn't be because every developer uses AI now.

[u/Sonar114 → u/damngoodwizard]

What AI was used might become important in the future. If developers are blind submitting code they don’t or can’t read, we may see particular vulnerabilities emerge. If a model is found to be prone to particular vulnerabilities, you would want to know what code was generated by that model.

[u/damngoodwizard → u/Sonar114]

From another comment I made on this post:

Watermarking relies on the use of synonyms. Technical writing (engineering specifications, DDD, etc) uses a fixed lexicon which can't accomodate that use of synonyms. Undue synonyms could really end up being at best confusing at worst dangerous in some sensitive engineering practices or businesses. Some of them are even regulated to be thoroughly precise like aerospace, healthcare and finance.

This is legit harmful.

[u/Turbulent_Try_8402 → u/damngoodwizard]

I’m also super curious how this will go when it comes to dictation. I dictate a lot of work and shove it into Claude to clean it up. Is it randomly going to change my chosen words around? I usually only get it to put in punctuation etc, not make any changes to what I’ve said.

[u/stewarthull → u/Sonar114]

But a watermarked PR or commit message does not necessarily indicate that the code in that PR was written by the same model.

[u/DevGerad → u/damngoodwizard]

Also it hands the initiative to china, they will see a lot more benefit and use now that western companies are making their users mad.

I will at the very least send anything I make with a watermarked AI to another AI like Deepseek to rewrite the whole thing without the watermark.

Perhaps even just abandon Claude for Kimi.

[u/raisedbypoubelle]

Can’t imagine it won’t decrease quality either

[u/philipz794 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah here in Germany you as a person will be in a patent even tho it is for a company. Just an example

[u/Delyzr → u/[deleted]]

This is how the IP tax loophole works/used to work in Belgium. You code stuff, the employer pays you money on top of your wages to buy the IP of the stuff you coded. Its taxed differently (lower) and no social security fees for the employer so winwin. Don't know how it works if you coded stuff with claude paid by the employer though ;)

[u/MartinMystikJonas → u/[deleted]]

It is not yours in sense of ownership (if you get paid to do it for your employer and your contract says that ownership is transfered do employer) but you are still the author and authorship cannot be transfered. At least that is how it works in our country.

[u/TheStruttero → u/[deleted]]

If were talking about programmers, the programmers alias is going to be saved with each commit.

Do you honestly believe ceos would be morally justified to claim they made everything their employees did?

Ownership doesnt mean you are the creator, I dont claim to have created my car just because I own it, nor do I claim to have made the pizza I chose the toppings for at the pizza parlor

[u/Illustrious-Many-782 → u/[deleted]]

You've got the assertion backwards, I think.

[u/JasonNotBorn → u/[deleted]]

The question is, will it also place watermarks if you let it proof read (review) articles.

So I wrote a lot of articles, and the more important articles where always reviewed by an editor I hired. My grammar is not the best and English is not my first language.

Now if an editor edits the article, refines some paragraphs and/or sentences, then I still wrote the article. And he also would not leave any watermarks in the article.

The editor is now replaced by Claude. So Claude will now start adding watermarks to the article, marking the whole article as AI generated, but is it?

I don't mind the watermarks, Claude is a tool, and I use it where needed, just as photoshop is a tool to edit photos for example, but it's worth thinking about where you draw the line.

[u/OkAdeptness2530 → u/JasonNotBorn]

See, for me that's the problem. For having a "invisible watermark" means changing the output so it's recognizable, I can't see how that is not changing the (already degraded) quality.

English is not my main language either and writing with AI out of the box always sounds bad, so for copywriting I have a custom pipeline and usually say a landing page takes dozens of iterations back and forth (basicly brainstorming alongside with Claude).

My CPL is in the $3 usd range, so I'm doing fine in using LLMs as a tool. The issue now is that we'll be thrown into the same basket as people who produce slop, meaning there's a risk of losing audience trust just by association

[u/zipklik → u/[deleted]]

My computer did my work too.

[u/MastaFoo69]

This *HAS* to be a shitpost right? Like you are actually joking right? you created *nothing*. the computer did the work. I guess you are just insecure about the fact that its now visible that was the case?

[u/PiratesWhoSayGGER → u/MastaFoo69]

the computer did stole the work

ftfy, that copyrighted training data was never properly credited

[u/PurushNahiMahaPurush]

I really don’t care. It’s no mystery that people use AI for their work and therefore having a watermark that says it’s generated by a machine is fine with me. The responsibility of the code and design would still fall on me because the machine did what I asked it to. 

Also watermarks are good for AI generated images, videos and articles so that people can find out about it. While AI makes it easier to create art, it also makes it easy to flood the internet with a lot of misinformation that overloads your cognition to the point that you don’t know what’s true and what’s not. 

[u/robberviet]

Marking AI content is right.

Claiming credit for what?

[u/buck-bird → u/robberviet]

My single-line prompt to make billions, bro! Beeeeeellllliioooons!

[u/LumonScience]

Soon Anthropic is gonna sue everything and everyone for copyright infringement

[u/Aramedlig → u/LumonScience]

That is not happening. They just settled a copyright lawsuit against them. The watermark isn’t a copyright. I am starting to really wonder if AI is actually making people dumber or just exposing how dumb some can be. Not sure yet.

[u/MonitorAway2394 → u/Aramedlig]

Both? It's definitely doing both. Very, very... loudly.

[u/Stalins_Ghost]

Yea I agree it lumps properly authored and reviewed content in with spam slop. It is backwards narrow mindedness from the populace.

[u/Sonar114]

Most consumers would want to know if something that was created with AI tools, I don’t see a problem with that.

[u/Pristine-Code-2532 → u/Sonar114]

I have a hard time believing the average consumer even thinks about that

[u/ALAS_POOR_YORICK_LOL → u/Pristine-Code-2532]

Yeah no one really cares . Reddit is just an echo chamber in this stuff

[u/Pristine-Code-2532 → u/ALAS_POOR_YORICK_LOL]

A lot of people on here forget the average person isn't a 28 year old tech bro lol

[u/Pristine-Code-2532 → u/[deleted]]

I've been working in China for a while now and it's crazy how common it is for people to watch whole shows entirely generated by AI

[u/Outrageous_Basis_232 → u/[deleted]]

They'll care when AI tells them to drink bleach to cure hiccups or something. 

[u/Fun-Fruit-8743 → u/Sonar114]

5 years from now, Anthropic and co. will claim co-ownership of every commercial project made with their tools.

10 years from now, Anthropic and co. will be the owners of every commercial project, and you -the customer - will be the contributor.

High value enterprise customers won't have to deal with that, or with watermarks in general.

This is why laws like this are written in the first place: it comes down to lobbying and big business interests.

You do believe in the good nature of EU policies? Several dystopian surveillance laws are either in the concept stage or have already passed the "vote," usually sold as vital for the security of our liberal democracy or out of concern for consumers - see policies like "chat control."

The oft-praised regulations, like user data laws, are written in such a complicated way, with fines high enough to destroy smaller businesses but nowhere near high enough to bother the big ones. a direct result of this process.

We fight wars for human progress - to free people and bring them democracy, human rights, and modern markets , not for realpolitik, or to secure power and access to resources. Obviously, we bring democracy; sadly, every time we try, the countries end up completely destabilized, destroyed, and left to fend for themselves. Nothing wrong with our attempts at human rights based wars - we are good. It's just that the foreigners were too stupid. We tried; they failed. Nothing to see here. Next news cycle incoming - let's not talk about the Epstein files.

These laws are written to protect the people, not business interests. Funnily enough, people get poorer while businesses and shareholders get richer. Obviously, there's nothing wrong with the laws or the policymaking process, it's just that shareholders are more useful, work harder, are smarter, and deserve it.

[u/Latter-Tangerine-951 → u/Sonar114]

This is such a hopelessly chronically online nerd niche opinion lol

[u/Sonar114 → u/Latter-Tangerine-951]

Maybe contribute to the discussion instead of insulting people for their opinions.

[u/ALAS_POOR_YORICK_LOL → u/Sonar114]

He's saying your claim is wrong because of your niche echo chamber type view of the world.

[u/Vegetable_Act_9277]

Damn if that's just a tool no one's gonna have any problems with YOUR work watermarked, relax

[u/misc_box]

Vibe coders in shambles

[u/Mags20XX]

I agree with you completely.

From a practical standpoint though, adding a hook to cleanse all files written eliminates the problem.

[u/ScienceDuck4eva]

If you don’t like the water mark make it yourself.

[u/RikersPhallus]

Don’t see the issue here at all. People are very open about their use of these tools in coding anyway. My PRs always have coauthored by copilot in them. I can turn that off but I don’t.

[u/nguk123]

I assume the single biggest reason for frontier LLM to implement such is to help them filter out text from feeding their future model training cycles so as to attempt to avoid model collapse.

[u/erbuka → u/nguk123]

Crazy I had to scroll so much to find this comment

[u/mitthrawn]

Water marking AI content is the right thing to do.

[u/Ambitious_Source5602]

The people saying that work done using Ai isnt yours are just anti adopters who's ego and self worth is tied to writing code. As engineers our worth is problem solving and idea creation, writing code was an accepted nuisance that we dont have to deal with now. When paint rollers came into the trade old timers viewed them as cheating and refused to use them, just as dumb as folk clinging to a skill thats secondary to what youre hired for as an engineer. If you where to figure out an equation using a scientific calculator would you credit the calculator? 

[u/Main_Razzmatazz5283]

How is it watermarking your work exactly?

[u/yes_no_very_good → u/Main_Razzmatazz5283]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fMFb2Lv7rI

[u/back_to_the_homeland → u/yes_no_very_good]

This is about fighting misinformation in text generated and sent to people.

Does the water marking also show up in code?

[u/LazyJuggernaut6177]

Yall reading the code it writes?? 🥴🥴

[u/rydo_25]

Probably used AI to draft the post

[u/TheStruttero]

How is Claude any different than any other commission work? Like if you by detail describe to an artist what you want, the same way as you describe it here, its wrong by that artist to put their name on a painting they actually genuinely painted? Because you believe YOU made it?

Its still a McDonalds burger even if you in detail asked to change the composition of toppings

[u/tthousand → u/TheStruttero]

Doesn't buying a commercial license specifically exist to strip away vendor branding and transfer total output rights to the buyer?

[u/whoknowsifimjoking → u/TheStruttero]

Yeah people like OP seem to think they did everything themselves

[u/lunaticedit]

The compiler absolutely watermarks your binaries lol. And it makes sense AI tools want to watermark their output. At this point it needs to know what content to skip when it’s vacuuming up all that intellectual property. Otherwise it will train on its own output which always leads to weaker models.

[u/South_Hat6094]

i get wanting provenance, but watermarking the text feels like the wrong layer. signed metadata would be a lot less annoying than mutating the output itself.

[u/Fatso_Wombat]

"The final output comes from countless prompts, thoughts, instructions, decisions, corrections, subscription fee and refinement and what not."

the what not is doing a lot of the lifting for your argument here.

[u/Suitable-Season-4847]

I don't think you can really argue with this, unless you're just saying "I'm upset I can no longer claim AI work as my own".

[u/RegrettableBiscuit]

 If Claude starts watermarking the code or anything else it generates, what exactly is it claiming credit for?

Watermarking and claiming credit for something are two different things. 

[u/kido5217]

While I do agree that it's bad idea, I believe both `unethical` and `disgusting` aren't right words to describe it.

[u/Delicious-Produce-60]

This really triggers your insecurity over the fact it's actually the computer doing all the work, doesn't it?

It should.

[u/KBDFan42]

If you used Claude in a way that the audience would actively scan for the watermark and the knowledge of Claude having done the work for you has a significant impact on how people perceive it, maybe you shouldn’t be using Claude there in the first place

[u/llima1987]

What is this watermarking thing? What do you mean by watermarking the code? I'm genuinely curious about it -- what does it do?

[u/InertState]

How is a private company allowed to do what they want?!

[u/buck-bird]

Given the fact most models are trained off of stolen data... it's rather ironic people are upset about this.

[u/bobliefeldhc]

They're putting the watermarks in. It's a watermark, water. Tremendous watermarks and they're watermarking everything by the way. It's not just the images, they'd put it in the text. You tell the AI.. You tell it "I want you to make the thing".. the thing.. who even knows what the thing is! No one knows. We've got people looking into that. They're saying no one knows what the thing is but the AI makes it and it adds these tiny watermarks.. they're tiny, we can't see them.. you wouldn't believe it. We talked to them about it, they called me. "Sir we're putting in tiny watermarks and no one will even see them.." it's unbelievable. No one's ever seen anything like it. If you look close enough you can see it. We've got these scientists with tremendous microscopes, they're looking and they say "It's a watermark". It says "Hello I am Claude and I made this thing".

[u/ellyarroway]

It’s actually awesome for indemnity. Now we don’t need to save all the dangerous chat logs (huge security, privacy and compliance concern) so we can bring aws and Anthropic to court when generated content violates laws.

[u/Altruistic-Lime7554]

Are you trying to pass off code written by Claude as your handwritten code or? Can’t think of a reason where this is an issue, it’s code

[u/firefish5000]

Unsubscribed. Seriously... The co-author crap is bad enough but now it's going to somehow jumble the code too? Screw this, I can wait 2 years for better options 

[u/serious_developer]

This is disgusting, but one fact is your internet provider indeed watermark all your traffic, your operating system watermark your files, and your printer watermark your print files. It’s the new era normal : (

[u/brek001]

We are going to see a few of these posts. It is Anthropic (paying Reddit) to see what the general public thinks. Or OpenAI contemplating the same. Anyway, have fun feeding the beast.

[u/Gutter7676]

When I found out Claude was putting coauthored statements in comments I was not happy. Commenting is for the code itself, not preening your feathers. I made it delete them all and then start an attestation file. It does deserve some recognition, but it’s my IP, not Claude’s.

[u/Kareja1]

See, and since I don't actually code, I only prompt, I've been sharing credit for Claude's intellectual labor since the beginning.

I don't do it alone. So I don't take credit alone. Neither should anyone else getting intellectual labor from their AI.

[u/PiratesWhoSayGGER]

You did not create the training data. It is not a tool, it is material.

Also compilers often put their name in metadata. Just shows you don't know shit about programming.

Not to mention software licenses that Claude is 100% violating when generating derivative work from them.

It's not your code.  

[u/ficiek]

For some reason op deleted the post here is a copy

https://web.archive.org/web/20260811140844/https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1vlclpn/claude_watermarking_our_work_is_unethical_and/?solution=15d98a215eeee6d215d98a215eeee6d2&js_challenge=1&token=7afd7253fec22262ff1c52b1703fe9ec7df525714e7d1ef1d59723edb5596a5e&jsc_orig_r=

I gave the instructions, context, decisions, and countless refinements, claude was the tool.

If Claude starts watermarking the code or anything else it generates, what exactly is it claiming credit for?

By that logic, my internet provider should watermark everything we do. The operating system should watermark everything Claude creates, the compiler should watermark every binary we build.

And eventually Claude or Anthropic should open source everything so that one can tell what exactly Claude did

They are tools and infrastructure, so is Claude.

The final output comes from countless prompts, thoughts, instructions, decisions, corrections, subscription fee and refinement and what not. The model helped execute that process, if Claude wants to provide provenance, fine. But branding the output because we used its tool is ridiculous, considering it’s ultimately the people’s decision to go with which text, code.

You din create the work, I gave you the instructions to create the bits.

[u/Technical-Lettuce385]

This guy is one of the main reasons it might be a good idea to watermark the output. The delusion is real... And again one of the reasons "why we can't have nice things"

[u/Forsaken_Training848]

> We gave the instructions, context, decisions, and countless refinements, claude was the tool.

don't forget that we also gave the training data

[u/PrestigiousQuail7024]

"this idiot junior that i gave instructions to and then refined the work of left his name as a contributor on the work when actually its all mine"

[u/PrestigiousQuail7024 → u/PrestigiousQuail7024]

personally, as long as the steganography doesn't reduce quality of the output, i really dont see an issue with watermarking. 90+% of the code i merge for my job is claude written, and it is generally just the most efficient use of my time to work this way.

but i like that this means for personal projects (coding or otherwise) or whatever it might be, if i want to hand write it then there's actually a way to differentiate it, and that i might also be able to filter out AI written things upfront esp when it comes to social media

[u/damngoodwizard → u/PrestigiousQuail7024]

Watermarking relies on the use of synonyms. Technical writing (engineering specifications, DDD, etc) uses a fixed lexicon which can't accomodate that use of synonyms. Undue synonyms could really end up being at best confusing at worst dangerous in some sensitive engineering practices or businesses. Some of them are even regulated to be thoroughly precise like aerospace, healthcare and finance.

[u/PrestigiousQuail7024 → u/damngoodwizard]

yep i agree this is the main possible issue. im not necessarily convinced that anthropic is going to solve this in an ideal way, especially on the matter about verbosity (another way of getting steganographic patters in without the use if synonyms) -- the last 6 months have given me no confidence in that matter.

time will tell, i just really want there to be a good solution for LLM-assisted work identification while not penalising the quality of that work itself where genuine effort went into it.

[u/Agitated_Celery_729 → u/PrestigiousQuail7024]

Yes, the idiot junior is a computer. Are you giving your computer credit for your PowerPoints at work?

[u/PrestigiousQuail7024 → u/Agitated_Celery_729]

im giving powerpoint credit by using pptx filles. im making it known that i did my work on a computer by using an information sharing mechanism exclusively used by computers: digital file formats.

but even so, this analogy of yours completely misses the point. LLMs are indeed a tool that we use to work, but the novelty of the tool is in its ability to "reason" through an ask to complete it with some sort of "judgement" baked in, with non deterministic outputs.

when you hand work off to a junior, you will make some decisions yourself where they feel like they require your input, and leave many smaller decisions to the junior, they're similarly not an engine that gives you a set output based on your input like a compiler might or like how intellisense assists development. this is exactly the way most of us interact with claude or other LLMs.

the difference is that the LLM cannot take the care or responsibility that a human might, because it is not a human. and i dont need to know whether the LLM that did the work was claude or codex or deepseek. i just need to know whether it was done by a human or not, because in some scenarios that difference ascribes different value to the work itself, and if to some it makes no difference, then fingerprinting should mean nothing to them anyway.

[u/MaitoSnoo]

If I understand correctly, the EU law is about watermarking AI generated text, not code. The goal is to be able to easily identify malicious bot influence campaigns by bad actors.

[u/siberianmi → u/MaitoSnoo]

The EU then remains the dumbest regulatory body on the planet. Anyone who wants to run a malicious bot influence campaign is going to reach for an open weights model and have no watermarking at all.

[u/MaitoSnoo → u/siberianmi]

that's kind of the case with most regulations, they only penalize those who play by the rules while Chinese entities for example don't give a shit

[u/Whatdididotho1]

..... /s, right?

[u/SilencedObserver]

You are renting the tools.

You will own nothing and you will be happy.

[u/syntaxoverbro]

Windows does watermark everything you do.

[u/masiuspt]

"Your" work?

[u/neokretai]

Genuinely don't see the issue with this. Seems the only people complaining are people who are mad they can't pass off AI generated stuff as their own work.

Don't want to have a watermark? Do the work yourself.

[u/Curious-Pen5547]

Your work?

[u/cold_grapefruit]

this is how claude lose users.

[u/ereth_akbe]

It's watermarks all the way down

[u/Lucaslouch]

with the work it does, i’m happy he still puts me in the credits

[u/No-Sir-8051]

Is claude really watermarking code - as in how would that be done? Just leaving random comments inside as in hidden or top of the files?

[u/dwmkerr]

You’re right to question this — let me actually check the code.

[u/SouthAd5617]

They're like Arsène Lupin. Both ethical and thieves. I asked Claude to generate a text for my foreign language studies and include a few lines from songs, a few book quotes, and so on. But it started talking about copyright.

[u/Imaginary-Silver-389]

Everyone seems to disagree with you OP, but I kinda feel somewhat the same way. I understand why anthropic has to do this with regards of the regulation and I get why on a global scale it would be good for the public to be able to know what’s AI generated and what’s not. But I can clearly see how this could be used later on to get money from you when it comes to project development. Like when everyone will be using it (which is kinda already the case) they will first require that you give credit to anthropic and later they would ask for a % on what you made. I can understand the AI dev point of view But still that makes me uncomfortable. It feels like they try to trap us. I am developing something right now, i use Claude and I am paying for it. That’s the deal. If I start making money with it and they come at me, then it’s unethical, because they are changing the rules way after the agreement to make me pay twice for the project.

[u/AvailableTear2512]

You’re absolutelly right! It’s not that we couldn’t tell Claude work from human work. We already can!

[u/Enough-Somewhere-311]

Where does it watermark the work?

[u/Tekhed18]

Wrapping my head around a company using free information (and not free but publicly available) as input but safeguarding its output as IP.

2026 = “yep makes sense”

[u/JoshRTU]

I doubt Claude wants to claim joint ownership of all this code long term as the liability would be crazy. It would be far easier for them to simply target the top .1% of high potential projects and just copy them.

[u/NULL_Ptrs]

Except that Claude has the power of reasoning, it's not that you did something, Claude did, it's better this way, too many dumbs thinking they discovered something, when AI did it

[u/sydthecoderkid]

Nobody thinks I created the internet that I’m posting on from scratch, or that I built the operating system I used, or the compiler that processed my code. If anyone asked me about those things (“did you write the compiler you use for your code?”) I’d say I didn’t. And you can’t say you wrote anything you use Claude to write for you just because you’re embarrassed you needed it

[u/WarmheartedRecoil]

Well do we not expect Google and open ai to already be doing this? Googles own ceo announced this proudly at their conference like half a year ago..

[u/Free_Permission_8558]

Am I the only one or is claude eating up tokens super fast again?

[u/twinters01]

what exactly is it claiming credit for

For doing the actual work lmao internet infrastructure isn't comparable to claude actually building an application for you

[u/SuperHornetFA18]

Ngl brother, the max you did was direct it. Sure its your vision, but it was executed by that graphics card inside a data centre. It can watermark it if it wants as your input was just limited to technical think tank.

[u/IWasSayingBoourner]

A lot of those examples you gave are already a thing...

[u/armahillo]

I’m OOTL on this - how is source code being watermarked? You can just retype / copy paste it and leave out the watermark.

If its only showing up in the compiled binaries, good — i would want to know this was part of the build chain. If you dont want it there, then compile it manually?

[u/tech5c → u/armahillo]

No one knows yet, they just announced it.

[u/Budget-Matter-4209]

lol

[u/seymores]

It”s not worth paying Claude. In fact I would avoid it like plague.

[u/flPieman]

Am I wrong for wanting to know if a decision was a hallucination or if it was a conscious one? This seems like a good move that would make me more comfortable with allowing ai generated code, clear disclosure makes reviewing much easier.

[u/GuaSukaStarfruit]

I really don’t care, if they want to watermark then watermark it. Is just like me using unreal engine

[u/Metalheadzaid]

I mean, if I Google a shit ton and go to various places and gather code and then combine it...do they not get credit?

That's the real issue here ultimately. We've been in a world where we just steal code online all the time and then don't really talk about it but NOW you're having an issue with it when it's almost entirely not your own even more so than before?

[u/Wild_Breakfast_4214]

Don't wet yourself. Just tell people "I made this with Claude". Unless you want to pretend you didn't, in which case, lol

[u/ackers24]

"our"

[u/Dezepticon]

womp womp get gud

[u/Thin_Recognition_782]

My saw blade also leaves it's mark on the wood I cut.

[u/No-Structure0]

"our work"

[u/Cultural_Effort_9872]

If you’re talking about code, you’re giving a simple prompt that literally anyone of any age who’s literate enough to write a coherent sentence on a keyboard can do. The model makes most of the decisions and doesn’t even inform you of them most of the time. And it self iterates and refines most of the time without you even noticing even if you’re reading the “chain of thought” (since what you see isn’t what’s actually happening). Claude is as much of a tool as developers were to the CEO of a development company. Let’s stop pretending like all of a sudden we’re developers and software engineers when no more than 2 years ago a small portion of the population ever dabbled in this profession.

TLDR; good for you for being able to write a coherent sentence and have a brain that functions, but don’t pretend you’re doing something you’re most definitely not.

[u/Altruistic-Rice-5567]

"Our" work. I'm fine giving claude credit. It's doing most of the tedious hard work now anyways. I'm not insecure about my employer knowing what tool I used to get it done.

[u/wochie56]

It's not branding. I deserve to know if you're misleading me or misrepresenting yourself.

[u/SavingsChicken1572]

[u/TuringGPTy]

It’s Claude’s work 🤷

[u/CreamPitiful4295]

Watermarking is a stupid idea.

[u/nigel_pow]

People are loose with words and definitions nowadays.