No Slop for Me Please

Anthropic have clarified how their watermarking works, following changes they made this week to comply with the EU's AI Act.

First, I'm largely a proponent of AI, having setup processes and tools in my line of work to support the way I work, support the teams where I work, and optimise outputs for clients. But I think AI has a place, and there's a line at which humans must take the lead.

I think the whole watermarking and transparency with creative work is a good thing overall. I know that AI can help with process, but I also believe that human's should take the lead on creative decisions, decisions around morality, and anything that requires true empathy.

Art is subjective, but it's a completely emotional and human-centric. AI can produce imagery and prose that gives the facade of being creative, but it lacks the passion, connection, and nuance. An AI LLM cannot truly feel, therefore nothing it produces has "soul". I, amongst most other people, want to read things written from the heart, and I want to view art and film that has been carefully and intentionally crafted.

AI isn't meant to replace every aspect of our lives, it's meant to empower people to focus on the things that matter.

And for those times where an LLM is needed for ideation or starting off an email, you can either manually rewrite or use an open-weight LLM to edit and run a final pass (such as Google's Gemma 4 locally, or via OpenRouter).