Anthropic Adds Watermarks to Claude Outputs to Comply with EU AI Act

On August 13, artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced it would add watermarks to outputs generated by its chatbot Claude to comply with transparency requirements under the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act. The regulation mandates that tech companies label AI-generated or AI-modified content in a way that is machine-readable. This move sparked discussions among users on platforms like Reddit. Some criticized the watermarking mechanism as overly strict, arguing that ordinary users find it difficult to avoid leaving AI traces, while experienced Claude users could conceal the source through rewriting. Others called the watermark “unethical” and “disgusting,” emphasizing that they had done the bulk of the work themselves during their use of the tool. Meanwhile, some users expressed support for watermarking, stating it helps identify AI-generated content and mitigate potential risks, and pointed out the double standard in currently applying watermarks only to AI systems trained on others’ works.