Fascinating! So, if the Chinese models want to market their wares in the West, they will have to watermark. But what if the Chinese engine is cloud-based and that cloud is not in the West—can I then sell a cowritten book on Amazon in the US, UK, Euro, Australia? If no-one is seeking a watermark on my work, do I have to tick the Amazon (not the world’s most trustworthy company) AI disclose box in the KDP bookshelf? How are they ever going to tell/prove I did or didn’t use AI in some form?
The watermark is applied by Anthropic, automatically, during generation. You don't choose it. It's in the output before you touch it.
The essay is about what happens when that mark shows up in a courtroom during a software copyright dispute.
Your KDP question is a different issue. Amazon requires disclosure when AI generated the prose. That policy applies whether or not the model watermarks its output.
A Chinese model without a watermark would be harder to detect. You're right. That's the competitive asymmetry problem.
My own personal ethics means I would tick the box anyway (because if Amazon ever read the book, it would see a disclosure in there about co-writing with AI), but it does make the whole point of Amazon's AI tick box somewhat useless. Of course, the Zon can and does disable accounts for reasons sometimes known only to itself, and getting the account reinstated can be a nightmare (I have firsthand experience of this—blogged if you want the case study link) but how it would play out in a court of law is 'interesting'... 😄
If the company doesn't own the code, then who does? Another way to say it: does all the code currently being built using Claude now belong to Anthropic?
It's total bs that they can't region lock this tool, but perhaps VPN was the outright thought.
The end result will be total anarchy, but watching it come alive actively is pretty exciting. Thanks for the great summary!
Fascinating! So, if the Chinese models want to market their wares in the West, they will have to watermark. But what if the Chinese engine is cloud-based and that cloud is not in the West—can I then sell a cowritten book on Amazon in the US, UK, Euro, Australia? If no-one is seeking a watermark on my work, do I have to tick the Amazon (not the world’s most trustworthy company) AI disclose box in the KDP bookshelf? How are they ever going to tell/prove I did or didn’t use AI in some form?
Great questions!
The watermark is applied by Anthropic, automatically, during generation. You don't choose it. It's in the output before you touch it.
The essay is about what happens when that mark shows up in a courtroom during a software copyright dispute.
Your KDP question is a different issue. Amazon requires disclosure when AI generated the prose. That policy applies whether or not the model watermarks its output.
A Chinese model without a watermark would be harder to detect. You're right. That's the competitive asymmetry problem.
My own personal ethics means I would tick the box anyway (because if Amazon ever read the book, it would see a disclosure in there about co-writing with AI), but it does make the whole point of Amazon's AI tick box somewhat useless. Of course, the Zon can and does disable accounts for reasons sometimes known only to itself, and getting the account reinstated can be a nightmare (I have firsthand experience of this—blogged if you want the case study link) but how it would play out in a court of law is 'interesting'... 😄
The literal mark of the beast. Crazy!
If the company doesn't own the code, then who does? Another way to say it: does all the code currently being built using Claude now belong to Anthropic?
It's total bs that they can't region lock this tool, but perhaps VPN was the outright thought.
The end result will be total anarchy, but watching it come alive actively is pretty exciting. Thanks for the great summary!
According to the Copyright Office, it should belong to no one.
But a corporation is legally a person, right? And as the owners and sole proprietors of the machine that wrote all of the code...?!?
I had the same thought.
Anthropic:
"So long, and thanks for all the fish!"
But fish is code. For code.
(Apologies to Douglas Adams)