Anthropic says it will watermark text generated by its AI models
TechCrunch Ivan Mehta ● Covered by 4 sources
Anthropic says Claude’s text will get a watermark to meet EU rules. That mark should follow copy-paste, which makes hiding AI text a lot harder.
Based on reporting by TechCrunch, Ivan Mehta — read the original for the full story.
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Anthropic says it will watermark text made by its AI models, including Claude, as it moves to comply with European rules. The company confirmed the change on an updated support page, framing it as part of the EU AI Act’s Transparency Code, which took effect on August 2.
The rule requires AI companies to mark AI-generated or AI-edited content in a way that other systems can spot. Anthropic says every model released after August 2 will automatically include technology to watermark both generated text and files. For files, it is using the C2PA open standard.
The company also says it will extend support to older models. And the watermark is meant to stick around when users copy and paste text, even if some editing happens afterward. Anthropic says the marking is applied at the model level, so it should show up no matter which Claude product or surface produced the text.
That still leaves an awkward question unanswered: how much editing is enough to strip it out. TechCrunch says it asked Anthropic for clarification. The company says the watermark will apply across its Claude platform API, Claude, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, and Claude Tag.
Anthropic is not doing this alone. Other companies including Black Forest Labs, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Synthesia have also said they will follow the EU’s code. The wider industry is clearly trying to get ahead of regulation, and a bit of user backlash, before the issue gets any messier.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is what happens when the AI industry spends years pretending provenance is someone else’s problem. Europe has basically forced the grown-ups into the room, and the rest of the market is now sprinting to look compliant before the lawyers arrive. The only surprise is how long it took for “just make the machine sign its work” to become policy.
Read more about this at: TechCrunch
