RIP Claude – Rands in Repose Skip to content<br>I’ve used Claude quite a bit for both the upcoming new book and the next edition of Managing Humans. I wrote the entire book, but, as I’ve done for years, I’ve used the robots for editing, research, and data wrangling.<br>When Anthropic announced they were going to do "text and image" watermarking, my eyebrow was raised. When humans I trusted began to analyze the announcement, both eyebrows went up. This morning, as I’ve done my own research, I’m furious.<br>As of this moment, this is what I’ve researched.<br>Anthropic states that models born on or after August 2, 2026, will have watermarking and that older models will be retrofitted by December 2, 2026. Anthropic states these changes are in progress, with no per-model disclosure, which means they can switch marking on silently, with no notice promised.<br>There is no way to opt out, no API tier, no plan tier; enterprise-included. Applied server-side, below the model, worldwide.<br>No detector currently exists — only Anthropic can check.<br>As a writer, no sweat, right? I write my own content. I bang on my own keys. Here’s the issue. Each of the following actions watermarks text:<br>Synthesis<br>Proofreading<br>Translation<br>Summarization<br>Critique1<br>And most infuriating, the entire burden of their unannounced rollout is on me, and none of it is on them.<br>Fine. Make it easy. I’ve been a Claude Max user happily from the moment the program appeared. This is what I am doing:<br>Building gates to make sure all Claude text or images are never injected into any of my projects. A good practice anyway.<br>Researching migrating off Claude for all writing-related work. Stay tuned.<br>Getting in the mindset to cancel my Claude Max plan.<br>As a human who has had to wrangle with EU regulations in the past, I am abundantly clear what’s involved in the laborious bureaucratic process. I can guess what threats Anthropic is facing. However, this is a tone-deaf, clumsy, and alarming opening salvo in their watermark strategy.<br>Yes, I use Claude Code a huge amount for tool and application development. Go ahead. Watermark away. I am not claiming that I wrote any of that code. My writing is my work, and Anthropic’s current strategy is aggressively writer-hostile.
What this means: if I ask Claude to critique a piece and I happen to cut and paste part of its reply into the text, then that could be marked. ↩︎ 
August 13, 2026<br>New from Rands<br>A Day in the Life of a Senior Leader<br>Everything they forgot to mention when they handed you the title.<br>Pre-order it →
The Leadership Newsletter<br>Get It In Your Inbox<br>Rands reposes about leadership — in email form.
Rands Leadership Slack<br>Think Out Loud With Us<br>Thousands of leaders. Come find your people.<br>Learn more →
1 comment · Leave a reply Leave a Reply Cancel reply<br>Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *<br>Comment *<br>Name *<br>Email *<br>Website
1 Response<br>The number of insignificant bits in short sections of plain text is too small for me to worry about it in a meaningful way marking most of my writing as goblin tainted. The implementation is also too broad, because it must be. They felt in order to be compliant they must add things as benign as proofreading, therefore I’m perfectly willing to admit that 100% of my long-form writing is AI touched.<br>FWIW knowing your existing corpus and your attention to detail I can’t imagine anyone thinking any word gets into your writing where you do not take personal responsibility for its inclusion, regardless of who or what might have suggested it originally.
Reply
BOOKS<br>Managing Humans: Tales of leadership from the Silicon Valley.<br>The Software Developer's Career Handbook: Chaos is an Opportunity.<br>Small Things, Done Well: Practice becoming a better leader. Daily.<br>Merch<br>Rands Schwag: Leadership leading with the letter R.
Don't Skip This<br>Thank you for scrolling to the bottom. If this is your first visit, I recommend starting by reading don't skip this.<br>Categories<br>Apple<br>Biking<br>Buzz<br>Design<br>Excerpt<br>Fake Notebook<br>Guides<br>Hollywood<br>Management<br>Media<br>Photo<br>Plugs<br>Product<br>Rands<br>Surf<br>SXSW<br>Tech Life<br>The Important Thing<br>Tools<br>Vegas<br>Writing
The Leadership Newsletter<br>New writing and links on leadership, technology, and the things in between. Delivered weekly.
DELEGATE.<br>USB-C is a shape, not a speed.<br>3 books on engineering leadership
Still debugging the humans (and robots)<br>ReadBetter, Faster, and (Even) More<br>Rands in Repose · est. Los Gatos, California<br>Lights. flip for dark mode flip for light mode HONK.<br>Failure to understand delegation is failing to be a leader.<br>912 posts since 2002<br>Writing about leaders & builders since 2002<br>Belief is hard to earn, easy to lose.<br>39,520 words written in the last year<br>ReadExtremely Lazy and Immensely Curious<br>WANDER.