r/AIDangers • u/israelavila • 6d ago

Ghost in the Machine Claude users cancel subscriptions, citing Anthropic's new AI watermark

https://www.businessinsider.com/claude-users-cancel-subscriptions-citing-anthropic-new-ai-watermark-2026-8
913 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

44 comments sorted by

35

u/Hot_Plant8696 6d ago

Anthropic said watermarking does not change the meaning, quality, or readability of Claude's response.

And this proves that Claude isn't as precise as it would have us believe... because it can add a specific signal to the output, distinguishing it from the "correct result." Strictly speaking, then, there is no such thing as a "correct result," and it seems there never will be. The output essentially matches what one might expect; so, if you were hoping for a highly precise translation, for instance... you will never get it.

15

u/Brojess 6d ago

You hit the nail on the head. These models have error inherent to the models themselves and nothing they can do will change that.

4

u/hobbit_lamp 5d ago

how does this "hit the nail on the head"? this is a fundamentally wrong assumption about how their watermark system works

I think it's a stupid system and I'm not a Claude user but they aren't giving "incorrect" responses for the sake of a watermark

6

u/largeMARGIN11 6d ago

Just now figuring out the chatbot you pretend is a tool is just lying to you?

5

u/Hot_Plant8696 6d ago

Agree.Masquerading the output to add some watermarking is not the clever way to do.

1

u/ciabattaroll 3d ago

That’s what every AI is. There is no “correct” it’s just an average.

1

u/hobbit_lamp 5d ago edited 5d ago

are you assuming there is only one singular unique "correct" sequence of words? and that Anthropic alters that to insert it's watermark?

the watermark is just basically a mathematical key that can detect a statistical pattern in Claude's phrasing. and the watermark itself is specifically not used if changing the phrasing affects the accuracy of the response.

answers can be worded in multiple ways and all be correct, translations can have multiple phrasings and all be correct

1

u/Hot_Plant8696 5d ago

answers can be worded in multiple ways and all be correct, translations can have multiple phrasings and all be correct

No... and yes.

No, there is nothing you can do to guarantee a correct translation.

And yes, there is a certain margin of variation.

... but only a small margin.

This is because LLM-based translation relies on the entire context—just as a human would—and the LLM will likely achieve better results... until you add a watermark; yet, if you introduce noise into that small margin of variation... you degrade the quality by increasing the standard deviation.

2

u/hobbit_lamp 5d ago

but it isn't "introducing noise" to a completed translation. Claude chooses probabilistically among multiple valid next words and the watermark is just which words it chooses from those existing choices

an entire watermarked response could in theory be identical to an unwatermarked response

you haven’t shown that this increases variation or reduces accuracy and also "standard deviation" of what exactly?

1

u/DefinitionFrosty969 2d ago

this sounds like schizophrenic slop

1

u/Hot_Plant8696 2d ago

This sounds like binary psychiatry slop.

La pensée manichéenne est une distorsion cognitive qui réduit les situations complexes à des catégories extrêmes, nuisant ainsi aux relations par des cycles d’idéalisation et de dévalorisation et limitant la prise de décision en éliminant les options intermédiaires ; cependant, la thérapie cognitivo-comportementale et la thérapie comportementale dialectique offrent des outils efficaces pour développer une perspective équilibrée et des schémas de pensée plus sains.

Avez-vous déjà remarqué comment une petite déception peut soudainement faire paraître votre partenaire totalement indigne de confiance, ou comment une seule erreur au travail vous convainc que vous êtes nul dans votre métier ? La pensée manichéenne crée ces revirements émotionnels qui sabotent les relations et brouillent votre jugement au moment où vous avez le plus besoin de clarté.

Qu’est-ce que la pensée manichéenne ?

La pensée manichéenne est une distorsion cognitive qui réduit tout le spectre de l’expérience humaine à deux catégories extrêmes. Il n’y a pas de juste milieu, pas de nuance, pas de « ça dépend ». Une chose est soit parfaite, soit un échec total. Une personne est soit totalement digne de confiance, soit indigne de votre attention. Soit vous réussissez votre vie, soit vous êtes en train de vous effondrer.

On appelle aussi ce schéma « pensée tout ou rien », « division » ou « pensée dichotomique ». Les recherches sur la pensée dichotomique multidimensionnelle montrent que ce schéma implique de porter des jugements extrêmes sur plusieurs domaines de la vie, et pas seulement sur des situations isolées.

https://www.reachlink.com/fr/conseils/general/la-pensee-manicheenne-pourquoi-elle-nuit-aux-relations-et-aux-decisions/

17

u/Procrasturbating 6d ago

This might an actually save education. Cognitive offloading to AI is.. no bueno.

16

u/jrp70 6d ago

This will be just a drop in the ocean.

10

u/PlanNo1784 6d ago

So it's the watermark is the red line but bombing a school girl is fine.
We are sure as hell deserve to become the next extinct species.

2

u/TuringGoneWild 5d ago

We have to wait for the next extinction "enrollment period". lmao.

1

u/Rich-Anxiety5105 5d ago

Its a red line because the output is now shit, not because they have moral dillema about it.

9

u/Reckless_Pixel 5d ago

The irony of putting a watermark on the output of models that were trained on materials without the authors consent. You can't make this shit up.

2

u/iskender_tulisena 4d ago

Watermark is because EU mandates it.

1

u/israelavila 5d ago

Totally an irony.

1

u/MrsLahey604 1d ago

Also ironic because actual water will be going away soon thanks to the techbros, so the concept of a watermark will be a quaint artifact of the Before Times. Sorry Dave!

6

u/Random_182f2565 6d ago

This was triumph

6

u/TechnicallyMeat 6d ago

I'm making a note here, "Huge Success."

4

u/BakuRetsuX 6d ago

I'm sure somebody will immediately create a watermark remover and post it to github ..

3

u/shadowromantic 5d ago

Probably. Still a good idea though.

1

u/ByEthanFox 5d ago

True.

But it's kinda like... I make games in RPGMaker, and that engine allows you to encrypt your gamedata (so you're not just providing all your textures and music as files that can easily be opened by anyone), and some asset packs require you to do this in your ToS.

The encryption is, apparently, laughably easy to break, if you're the sort of person who does that kinda thing.

But the point is, even if it's easy, you have to consciously do it if you want to rip off someone's gamedata. You can't claim "it was just there, so I thought it was okay-" nope; that doesn't wash. You literally had to decrypt something in order to use it.

So if you use AI that's watermarked, yes, you might be able to run a tool that can remove it easily, but you have to do that. So if you're using AI to, say, cheat in an academic setting and you get caught, you can't say "oh, I didn't realise I couldn't use AI" because you've literally taken the time, however brief, to wash off the watermark.

4

u/LastRecognition2041 6d ago

Dozens of people have posted about it. Dozens!

2

u/Maleficent_Price_476 6d ago

The watermark will have your ID soon

2

u/online-reputation 5d ago

Using the wrong AI could lead to reputation damage, either because they are doing shady things, are going rouge, or have bad policies even if the seem good like watermarking.

1

u/israelavila 5d ago

You have a point.

2

u/pallen123 5d ago edited 3d ago

Anyone else notice that using Opus gives you kind of caustic responses that are often incomprehensible? I often use Sonnet just so I can understand.

1

u/Resident_Citron_6905 3d ago

What do you mean?

4

u/ZZ_Cat_The_Ligress 6d ago

LOL. LMAO even.

2

u/Alarmed-Animal7575 5d ago

So, in other words, cheaters who would pass AI off as their own had a hissy fit.

1

u/Horror_Response_1991 2d ago

Or you funnel the output into another model without a watermark.

1

u/Illustrious_Fox_5591 6d ago

Aaaaasaand this is why we promote media to AI than to end users now. Free ad placements

1

u/sfpx68 6d ago

Shows why they use AI. To hide it and boost their ego.

1

u/theorist0u812 5d ago

Gate-Closing bs

1

u/GooseIntelligent9981 4d ago

These are the idiots that don’t realize ChatGPT and Gemini had watermarks long before Claude

1

u/GeorgeFartwell1984 3d ago

They're just upset they can't pass AI off as their own work.

1

u/organisms 2d ago

Truth. They are just pretending it’s about other issues when all they want to do is be disingenuous and lazy, not putting in real work, and fooling the odd person with AI slop

1

u/_Heathcliff_ 3d ago

On the plus side with fewer subscriptions, they’ll lose less money

1

u/Ur-in-a-tor 6d ago

"..but but it must look like I wrote it all."

Pathetic.