{"slug": "trivially-bypass-text-watermarks-by-requesting-a-base64-response", "title": "Trivially bypass text watermarks by requesting a Base64 response", "summary": "Anthropic plans to release text watermarking based on Google DeepMind's SynthID, which deterministically modulates the pseudorandom number generator behind token selection to allow later detection of AI-written text. However, the watermark is trivially bypassed by requesting the response encoded in Base64 and then decoding it, as the decoded text no longer follows the watermarked distribution. The bypass was highlighted in a Hacker News comment, though no official statement from Anthropic has been made.", "body_md": "| ||||||||||||\n1 point by |\nAnthropic plans to release text watermarking based on SynthID, which modulates the PNRG behind the token choosing mechanism deterministically in a way that lets another tool later estimate whether text was written by AI. This is trivial to bypass that, it's current form: 1. Ask for the response/essay/email encoded in base64 2. Decode it using https://www.base64decode.org/ While the encoded text will follow the watermarked distribution, the decoded text will not. | |||||||||||\n|", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/trivially-bypass-text-watermarks-by-requesting-a-base64-response", "canonical_source": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49333167", "published_at": "2026-08-17 16:01:55+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-17 16:11:23.226036+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-safety", "ai-policy", "generative-ai"], "entities": ["Anthropic", "Google DeepMind", "SynthID"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/trivially-bypass-text-watermarks-by-requesting-a-base64-response", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/trivially-bypass-text-watermarks-by-requesting-a-base64-response.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/trivially-bypass-text-watermarks-by-requesting-a-base64-response.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/trivially-bypass-text-watermarks-by-requesting-a-base64-response.jsonld"}}