ai and ml

OpenAI rolls out weak sauce watermarking for AI text

Compliance, we've heard of it

OpenAI is now offering API customers the option to watermark the output of certain models in order to comply with the letter of Europe's AI Act. And within a few weeks, the biz plans to apply a form of digital watermarking – like it or not – to eligible ChatGPT and Codex text output in the European Union.

But unlike rival Anthropic, it isn't applying its watermarking technique to content generated outside of Europe, though API customers can choose to have the marks applied to content made anywhere. Moreover, OpenAI is using technology that misses a fair number of instances of AI-generated text and can easily be tricked.

The EU AI Act requires generative AI service providers to make model output identifiable in a way that's readable by machines. 

Anthropic was the first major AI company to announce its approach to AI Act compliance, which involves the application of Google's SynthID-Text algorithm. It's doing so globally. 

Microsoft and Meta have been working on similar technology for image-based AI because the EU is not the only market in which people have raised concerns about content provenance and the potential to use AI-generated content to produce misinformation. OpenAI already applies other content provenance signals to AI-generated images, audio, and video.