Text watermarking arrived 5 years too late, after AI slop already garbled the web

mmitchell_ai · x · 2026-09-22

Margaret Mitchell notes that text watermarking was flagged as a priority five years ago but is only being adopted now — after the internet has been flooded with AI slop, degrading both web experience and the human text available for training. She argues the stochastic input-output relationship of AI demands a rigorous science of input-output analysis, referencing her and Helen Toner's Senate hearing testimonies on the need for rigorous measurement.

Related event: Margaret Mitchell's New Paper: AI Agents Are Pushing Humans Out of the Loop(4 posts)→

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