Watermarking the future
Illustration by Erik Carter
A video of Elizabeth Warren saying Republicans shouldn’t vote went viral in 2023. But it wasn’t Warren. That video of Ron DeSantis wasn’t the Florida governor, either. And nope, Pope Francis was not wearing a white Balenciaga coat.
Generative AI has made it easier to create deepfakes and spread them around the internet. One of the most common proposed solutions involves the idea of a watermark that would identify AI-generated content. The Biden administration has made a big deal out of watermarks as a policy solution, even specifically mandating tech companies to find ways to identify AI-generated content. The president’s executive order on AI, released in November, was built on commitments from AI developers to figure out a way to tag...