Major AI companies implement watermarking to comply with EU AI Act transparency requirements

Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Cohere, and Synthesia have committed to watermarking AI-generated content to comply with EU AI Act transparency regulations. Anthropic announced that all Claude models released after August 2, 2026, will automatically watermark generated text and files using the C2PA open standard. The company plans to expand watermarking to older models and implement systems enabling watermarks to persist when users copy and paste text, applying the standard across its product suite including Claude Code, Claude Cowork, and Claude Tag. The shift toward transparency measures addresses growing consumer concern: a Deezer study found that 97% of listeners cannot distinguish between authentic and AI-generated music, while approximately 50% of readers cannot identify AI-generated images. Watermarking and transparency initiatives represent an important step in protecting creative authenticity and consumer rights to know when content is machine-generated.