OpenAI will watermark ChatGPT outputs by default—but only in the EU

What happened

OpenAI will begin automatically watermarking text generated with ChatGPT in the European Union, the company has announced. The move in Europe is driven by a need to comply with the EU AI Act (the EU law setting rules for AI systems by their risk), which took effect in August. OpenAI is an artificial intelligence company based in San Francisco, and its products and services include ChatGPT.

Like other solutions, it is not especially reliable, and it's easy to circumvent. It will also offer the watermarking feature in other regions, but it will be off by default outside of the EU.

It requires marking content produced by AI models in a way that another tool can detect. Unfortunately, there is still no completely effective and reliable way to do that.