Hitachi Develops Watermark Tool to Detect AI-generated Writing

Japanese multinational conglomerate Hitachi Ltd. has developed an AI watermarking tool. The tool will help distinguish between generative AI and human-written sentences to protect against abuses such as the spread of false information.

The increasing usage of GenAI has made it challenging for schools to discern whether students write reports or leverage the technology instead.

Japan’s national daily, The Mainichi, reports that when humans write, word choice is based on different factors. To address this, Hitachi has added some expected following words to digital watermark word lists.

The tool is designed in such a way that when AI writes a sentence, it will automatically select certain words from such lists.

Notably, AI-generated sentences containing the telltale watermarks have a higher probability of including words that match those in the lists, making it possible to differentiate the two.

One of the developers, Koichi Nagatsuka, said, "As debate over the rules and regulations of generative AI continues, we'd like to first improve the accuracy of the watermarking technology so that it can be put to practical use."