AI Governance Engineer
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Watermarking

By Updated

Embedding a signal in generated content (image, audio, video or text) that a detector can later read to identify it as AI-generated. The AI Act asks providers of generative systems for machine-readable, detectable marking 1; NIST reviews watermarking alongside provenance tracking and detection 2. Marks can degrade under ordinary transformations, so their survival is tested.

Developed in
ch. 18, Transparency cases (Article 50)
Chapters
ch. 18, EU AI Act · ch. 20, Existing Law
Contrast with
Content provenance (C2PA) · Latent disclosure
Source
2 numbered references, listed below

Where it is used

One chapter of the Body of Knowledge uses the term. Each link opens the first section that does.

  • Deepfake

    Under the EU AI Act, a deep fake is AI-generated or manipulated image, audio or video content that resembles existing persons, objects, places, entities or…

  • AI Act (EU)

    Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, the EU's horizontal, risk-tiered law for AI, amended by the Digital Omnibus.

  • Provider

    Under the EU AI Act, whoever develops an AI system or general-purpose AI model, or has one developed, and places it on the market or puts it into service…

Sources

  1. [1] Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (AI Act), consolidated text as amended by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 (Digital Omnibus on AI, in force 27 Jul 2026; definitions in Art. 3, incl. 3(1), 3(3) to 3(14), 3(14b), 3(20), 3(22), 3(23), 3(29) to 3(32), 3(49), 3(55) to 3(57), 3(60), 3(61), 3(63), 3(68); Arts. 4, 5, 6 (incl. 6(3) third subparagraph, profiling), 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 22 to 27 (incl. 26(11)), 40, 41, 43, 47, 48, 50, 53 (incl. 53(1)(c)), 55, 57, 60, 72, 73, 86; Annexes I, III, IV). Publications Office of the EU (EUR-Lex). 2026-07-27. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1689/2026-07-27/eng (verified: primary)
  2. [2] NIST AI 100-4, Reducing Risks Posed by Synthetic Content: An Overview of Technical Approaches to Digital Content Transparency (provenance data tracking, watermarking, metadata recording and synthetic-content detection). NIST. 2024-11-20. https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.AI.100-4 (verified: primary)

Definitions of legal terms paraphrase the cited text, which governs. Dated statements are as of .

Cite this term

García Aibar, J. (2026). Watermarking. In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis & Body of Knowledge (v0.5.0), Glossary. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197. https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/watermarking. CC BY 4.0

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026watermarking,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{Watermarking}},
  note    = {Glossary, AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis \& Body of Knowledge, version 0.5.0},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.22956197},
  url     = {https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/watermarking}
}