The Download

Morning Brew Inc.

TL;DR: Anthropic will embed a new AI watermark in all text generated by Claude—and it may not be that easy to remove. It’s doing this to comply with an EU law that just went into effect, but it also lands as public fatigue around AI-made content reaches an all-time high.

What happened: This is good news for haters of AI writing, as the imperceptible watermark won’t get stripped out by copying and pasting.

Anthropic dropped the news yesterday, and it’s a glimpse of the impact the EU’s new AI transparency law might have. The law, which went into effect on August 2, requires providers of AI tools to mark their outputs in a “machine-readable format.” Anthropic is rolling out the watermark worldwide for all new models, and will eventually add it to existing ones.

The announcement comes as backlash against AI slop reaches critical mass, with platforms rolling out new features to label AI content seemingly every day. We don’t know exactly what Anthropic’s watermark will look like, but the system could be similar to Google’s SynthID, which works on text, images, videos, and audio. Another unanswered question: how detection tools will be made available to the public. Anthropic says it’s working on letting users and “other third parties” detect its watermark, as part of a voluntary Code of Practice the company recently signed.

How it (probably) works: AI text watermarks get embedded in the actual sequence of words—they’re not some invisible character you can remove by, say, manually retyping the text.

At a basic level, AI text generation works by predicting which word is statistically most likely to follow the previous one. But don’t worry, em-dash stans—your writing probably won’t get flagged just for sounding vaguely AI. These watermarks deploy a secret key that tweaks the probability of words used (leaving a signature that it was generated by a certain lab’s models)—and text that doesn’t match that pattern won’t carry the mark.

The big but: AI text watermarks aren’t tamper-proof. One study from Queen’s University found that paraphrasing with another AI model or using back translation—translating text into another language, then back to the original—could reduce detection of watermarked text. Or you could just dilute the AI text by dropping it into a larger body of human-written words so it’s harder to find.

Bottom line: Most major AI labs signed the same Code of Practice that Anthropic did—notable absences include Amazon and xAI—and everyone has to follow the new EU transparency rules. It could all usher in a drastic change for how AI text gets disclosed. And perhaps even how many AI slop books we see on digital shelves. —WK

      

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Get to Gmail inbox zero in 1 step

If you’re like me and your eye starts twitching every time you see a number next to one of your folders in Gmail (I’m a notorious inbox-zeroer), I have good news for you. There’s actually a shortcut that allows you to find just the unread emails in whichever folder you choose (or the inbox, if you want everything at once, you masochist, you).

Find those pesky unread emails: Open whichever folder is driving you crazy → in the search box at the top, right after the label:[name of folder] tag, type is:unread and hit enter. It’ll then populate all your unread emails.

I do this at least once a week and I’ve never slept better. You’re welcome. —SM

If you have a tech tip or life hack you just can’t live without, fill out this form and you may see it featured in a future edition.

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The Zeitbyte

Why job seekers are booking interviews at 1am

Getty Images

Nothing says dream job like performing for AI in the middle of the night. Apparently, job candidates are scheduling interviews well past bedtime, since the first step in many hiring processes is a sit-down with a chatbot that doesn’t need its beauty sleep. After one job seeker in Atlanta was told to answer a bunch of questions on camera, he told Wired he decided to record his responses at 9:30pm because “what else was I going to do?”

One AI-interview startup said that 24% of its interviews happen between 10pm and 2am, per Wired. Even Greenhouse reported that up to 20% of candidates now choose overnight slots. Hourly workers and parents who can’t spare 30 minutes before 10pm are reportedly driving the trend. And all we can say is: Finally, an interview slot that doesn’t require begging your boss for an extra-long lunch break. —SM

Chaos Brewing Meter: ☕☕/5

• Here’s how a Tesla-SpaceX merger could be Elon Musk’s shortcut to almost $1 trillion more.
• Turns out Apple’s all-glass 20th-anniversary iPhone plans may not be shattered after all.
• RIP to Google’s Search button?
• Everything’s fine; nothing to see here, folks! Following the exits of its head of safety systems and an ex-head of mission alignment, OpenAI’s latest departure is its only ethicist…who isn’t getting replaced.
• The first Tesla Cybercab apparently has Starlink now—and it begs the question: For what purpose? (Hint: It could be all about the dollars.)
• Meta’s lawyers are probably having a pretty bad day.
• Well, this can only go well…Wall Street is betting $500 billion that AI chips are really “investable assets.”
• You can now book restaurant reservations directly through ChatGPT.

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This time last week...

Readers’ most-clicked story was about Musk sharing a graph on X that has many people scratching their heads.