Why do People Care if Claude Puts Watermarks On Text it Wrote?

Claude and OpenAI have let know they’ll be adding watermarks to its copy so as to comply with EU laws.

Reading the net, I see people complaining, some raising concerns on way or the other and others seeing AI playing with their writing, including legal professionals and their content marketing people writing for law firms.

You have to agree with the comments from Dave Winer, the founder of RSS, podcasts, and for all practical purposes, blogging.

“Why do people care if Claude puts watermarks on text it wrote. It’s screwing with its writing, not yours. As a person who publishes their own writing, and carefully labels it when it’s written by an AI bot (docs, change notes, podcast show notes, quotable things it said), I want people to be able to tell that I wrote it, this is what I thought, I’m not just shoveling random written sludge to people, sloshing around, devaluing every bit of real writing in its midst. I bet teachers love the idea. Why does everyone have to have an opinion about every damned thing? And of course I have even more to say on the subject.”

I use AI for research, outlining and sometimes, grammar. My grammar and spelling is awful, even after twenty three years of blogging. The problem is that AI starts to assert control over my copy with me then spending a lot of time to get things back to my writing style and tone.

There are going to be happy mediums on the use of AI in writing, and I’d guess there are already some decent tools and ideas out there. I’d welcome hearing about them

But the bottom line put forth by Winer is pretty sound, ”Why care if AI is screwing with the writing it wrote?”