Claude’s text watermark – Does it matter in an AI output world?
Legal IT Insider
2mo · 5 min
Anthropic has started embedding watermarks in Claude's output to flag it as AI-generated — raising a real question for lawyers about what that means for work product and disclosure.
As of this month, content generated by most of Anthropic’s Claude models will include embedded watermarks to label it as AI generated, causing concern that is seeing some vendors and lawyers consider whether they should quit using Claude for drafting.
Anthropic, which has made the move in compliance with the EU AI Act, has explained that generated text will carry embedded watermarks and generated files will include digitally signed provenance metadata where supported.
Watermarks will apply to output from Claude models across the Claude Platform (API), Claude, Claude Code, Claude Cowork and Claude Tag, not just in Europe, but worldwide, unless marks are not supported. At its simplest, the marks come from the sequence of words that Claude uses/chooses, which creates a statistical pattern.
Many are pointing out that the fact that this has been rolled out to comply with the EU AI Act also means that other major tech vendors will likely have to follow suit. We’ll come back to that point in a second, but it makes it no less problematic for users, who are considering the impact of new developments on both the way they use AI (and how that may be overstated); what it means for the credibility of the documents they produce; and what it means for the likes of ownership in patent law.
One cause of concern is the fact that a lawyer might create an original document that it is checked and slightly modified by AI, and that it will be labelled as AI generated.…
That's the opening of the original reporting — continue reading at Legal IT Insider for the rest.
Open at Legal IT Insider ↗
