Hey Reader,

Something happened this week that's worth talking about — especially if you've been following along with what I've been sharing about writing with AI.

As of August 2nd, Claude started embedding an invisible watermark into every piece of text it generates. You can't see it. It doesn't change how the writing reads. But it travels with the text when you copy and paste it, and AI detection tools will be able to find it.

A lot of people are panicking about this. I get it.

But here's what I actually think:

The watermark isn't your real problem. Letting AI do your thinking for you is.

If you hit a button, got a draft, changed a few words, and called it your book — that's the problem. Not because a detector might catch it, but because it's not yours. Your readers will feel that, watermark or no watermark.

But if you used Claude as a collaborator — to help you get your own ideas out of your head and onto the page — and then you went to town on that draft, rewrote it in your voice, cut what didn't sound like you, added your own stories and your own texture — that document is yours. The watermark might technically still be there, but it doesn't matter if you have nothing to hide.

That's the only version of AI-assisted writing I teach. And it's the only version I'd stake my reputation on.

Here's what I tell everyone I coach: treat the AI draft like a lump of clay. It gives you something to react to instead of a blank page. But you're the sculptor. If you hand someone a lump of clay and call it a finished piece, that's on you — not the clay.

Go to town on it.

Rewrite it.

Make it sound like you talked it out loud over coffee.

Cut the parts that sound like a LinkedIn post.

Add the thing you almost didn't include because you weren't sure it was relevant.

That's where your book actually lives.

The writers who are going to get kneecapped by watermarking and AI detection are the ones who were never really writing in the first place.

You're not one of those people. At least, I'm assuming you're not — otherwise you wouldn't still be reading this.

Steve

P.S. — OpenAI, Google, and Meta have all committed to the same EU transparency code. Switching tools won't get you out of this. The watermarking era is here for everyone. The only real answer is to write something that's actually yours.