This Week in Apple: Let’s fight

First we’ll look at how AI IS TEARING THIS FAMILY APART! Then we’ll talk about Apple’s rumored AirPods with cameras, which are also a problem.

I’d like to have an argument, please

This week Anthropic announced that in order to identify AI from human-generated content it would be watermarking all text it generates by subtly altering the randomness at which its models picked the next word. While this might seem a perfectly cromulent means of accomplishing a worthy goal, it really rubbed John Gruber the wrong way, as if someone suggested putting autocomplete Swiss on his Philly cheesesteak AI.

Gruber subsequently keyed a post in which he called watermarking “a perversion of writing.” This prompted many others to say “A perversion of whatnow?”

Daniel Jalkut responded that “AI Can’t Adulterate its Own Writing”:

…to be offended by “the perversion of writing” you need actual writing to pervert.

Dan Moren responded similarly, saying that “LLMs aren’t writing”:

A computer that has digested the work of thousands if not millions of people and regurgitated them according to a statistical model is equivalent to a person toiling by the sweat of their brow to bring meaning into existence from nothingness?