this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2026
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Can someone ELI5 how this would actually work, especially with copying and pasting?
You know how these AIs output tokens? I'm going to explain the concept with words, because that makes it easier to understand. But it means that the explanation is [ETA:]NOT quite right.
An AI has a vocabulary. The words in that vocabulary are assigned to 2 groups.
Sometimes when the AI is outputting something, it could use different words equally well. It's not quite the same as having synonyms, cause this isn't really about words. But let's say you have synonyms in those different groups. At those points in the text, you can pick from one group or the other to embed a hidden pattern in the text.
Limitations are obvious. To embed the watermark, you need enough opportunities to pick "synonyms". It won't work for very short texts, or if the word choices are very constrained.
I'm curious if the negative effects are really as minor as they say.