Claude users are canceling their subscriptions, citing Anthropic’s new AI watermark

Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic.

Bloomberg/Getty Images Anthropic has added a watermark to Claude-generated text that may survive some editing.

Some Claude users said they canceled their subscriptions, citing the watermark.

One developer said he's worried an AI label on code shipped to clients could raise questions about authorship.

Anthropic's move to watermark Claude-generated text is driving some users away from its AI assistant.

The AI lab said this week that some versions of Claude will embed an " imperceptible watermark " directly into their text output.

It will travel with the content when it is copied and pasted and may survive some editing, Anthropic said, helping to distinguish AI-generated material from human writing.

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

Despite that, dozens of people have posted on X since Monday that they had canceled their Claude subscriptions, citing the watermark.

Business Insider spoke with four users who said they had canceled their Claude subscriptions.

Some users, who shared confirmation of their cancellations with us, said they disliked the prospect of a persistent marker in their work and were worried about their AI use showing up in client work, such as coding.

While it's too early to say what the impact could be for Anthropic — the company had 300,000 business customers as of September 2025, a number widely expected to have grown significantly since then — backlash to the watermark shows no sign of slowing.

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

Why users say they're canceling Arturo Villarroya, who works in public policy, told Business Insider he canceled his Claude Max subscription — a service that starts at $100 a month — on Wednesday after becoming "uncomfortable" with Anthropic's new watermarking plan.