Anthropic defends and explains its AI watermarking feature

A poster at Anthropic's developer conference in San Francisco advertises its Claude product.

Don Feria/AP Content Services for Anthropic Anthropic is watermarking AI text due to the European Union's AI Act requirements for transparency.

In a blog post, Anthropic said its watermark subtly alters word choices in Claude models.

Previously, some Claude customers told Business Insider they were concerned about the watermark.

Anthropic is trying to calm everyone down over its new watermark.

The company sparked a wave of discourse this week when it updated a support page for its Claude model to reveal its plans to mark AI-generated text as AI-generated.

Now, after concerns from Claude users , Anthropic has published a blog post on Friday that defends and explains the technology.

It also outlines the tool's limitations.

The AI lab's post first makes one point clear: it is watermarking its text to comply with the European Union's AI Act, and its AI provider peers — a likely nod toward OpenAI — will have to do the same.

Like other EU tech regulations, the AI Act's effects ripple beyond the continent.

Anthropic said in its post that it's "applying watermarking globally at launch because we don't yet have a durable way to scope it by region." Watermarks will first be applied to new Anthropic models, and then to older ones in the coming months, the post said.

Previously, some customers told Business Insider they canceled Claude subscriptions because of the new watermark.

Anthropic told Business Insider that it hasn't seen a trend of an uptick in cancellations since it announced the watermark.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.