Watermarks Without Verification: AI Text Watermarking After the EU AI Act

The paper discusses the EU AI Act’s requirement for generative AI providers to embed detectable watermarks in their outputs, noting that Anthropic’s Claude models and Google’s Gemini use SynthID‑Text by default. It critiques the lack of verifiability of claims about watermark quality, privacy, and robustness, and evaluates the open‑source SynthID‑Text implementation on two open‑weight models, finding minimal impact on prose and modest correctness loss on code. The authors argue that the real governance issue is the inability to verify these assertions and outline necessary steps—such as output release, configuration disclosure, accredited audits, shared evaluation protocols, and interoperable detection—to address the gaps.

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