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arXiv:2306.09194cs.CR

Undetectable Watermarks for Language Models

Miranda Christ, Sam Gunn, Or Zamir

Early discovery. Linked by one identifiable commenter. This paper is outside the main ranking; a mention is not an endorsement.

Abstract

Recent advances in the capabilities of large language models such as GPT-4 have spurred increasing concern about our ability to detect AI-generated text. Prior works have suggested methods of embedding watermarks in model outputs, by noticeably altering the output distribution. We ask: Is it possible to introduce a watermark without incurring any detectable change to the output distribution? To this end we introduce a cryptographically-inspired notion of undetectable watermarks for language models. That is, watermarks can be detected only with the knowledge of a secret key; without the secret key, it is computationally intractable to distinguish watermarked outputs from those of the original model. In particular, it is impossible for a user to observe any degradation in the quality of the text. Crucially, watermarks should remain undetectable even when the user is allowed to adaptively query the model with arbitrarily chosen prompts. We construct undetectable watermarks based on the existence of one-way functions, a standard assumption in cryptography.

arXiv comments
Journal reference
DOI
Subjects
cs.CRCryptography and Security cs.CLComputation and Language cs.LGMachine Learning

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Linked by 1 identifiable commenter in 1 comment across 1 thread, from Mar 2026 to Mar 2026. Found in 4 HN submissions from Jun 2023 to Jun 2023. Open submission discussions.

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Discussed in comments1 thread

    • Detecting LLM-generated text is basically solved by modern watermarking techniques (https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.09194). However, the main trouble with watermark-based approaches is that you have to get every LLM provider to adopt it. A student trying to cheat could always opt for…

      AkranazonView on HNParent context

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