I'D RATHER BE WRITING ABOUT PIZZA OR CHEESE.
The only newsletter that would rather be writing 1500 words about 1995 beer trading cards.
There’s a great Simpsons meme where Abe Simpson is sitting on a stump with a bunch of kids around him. I love that Grok eliminated Bart from this version and got my Blue Jays shirt amazingly right.
Now, I saw this talking about the incredible rules lesson Major League Baseball had about four outs on Monday. The caption read, “And the runner still scored despite not tagging at 3rd.”
I think it’s just as apt to be used this week as people are losing their minds about Anthropic (aka Claude) shadow announcing that they are basically watermarking everything you do with it.
Clearly this is the Rule 5.09 (c) (4) of AI.
That caption could easily read something like, “You can see the watermark if you print the email and hold it up to a full moon. Not a half moon. They fixed that.”
The truth is, I would much rather be doing this whole issue about the pizza innovation of Domino’s new Domino - their first signature pizza in 65 years.
Or maybe even what’s going on with Italy’s strategic parmigiana reserve banks during the heat.
Or quite possibly this 1995 brand merch extension known as the Coors Trading Cart Collection.
I was even tempted to scrap everything and write about the iconic giveaway at Rate Field (aka Guaranteed Rate Field, U.S. Cellular Field, aka New Comiskey Park - which given the changes in sponsorship could be a full issue too) in Chicago where they gave out 40,000 pope hats last night.
But Dominos it is.
“The Domino fills a gap in our portfolio,” said Joe Jordan, chief operating officer and president of Domino’s U.S. “When everyone wants something different, traditional pizza falls short. The Domino lets every person build the exact pizza they want. It’s fitting that the next generation in pizza is shaped like the logo of the No. 1 pizza company in the world. The Domino is so mouthwatering that we gave it our name!”
Pizza portfolio? Traditional pizza falling short? What does this even mean?
I know what this means, they made a pizza in the shape of their logo that is really quite small. It’s tailor made for the GLP-1 crowd or anyone who tells themselves they can have just the small.
It’s a pizza shaming watermark. As Derek Zoolander might say, “What is this? A pizza for ants?” Who are these people? Where is the large Domino pie?
Instead I have to talk about how Claude dropped a support page update about watermarking everything and people on all platforms freaking out.
So thanks a lot, Claude.
THE TRACKING DEVICE HEARD ROUND THE WORLD
Yes, on Monday Anthropic updated a support page and millions of people haven’t stopped talking about it since.
The short version? New models will drop a totally chill watermark into every single piece of text Claude generates. Surprise!
A code that will travel when you copy and paste, something that probably even survives your 3 word editing of your email to your friends.
The company laid the update at the feet of the EU AI Act and the transparency code that they signed along with Google and Meta to mark AI output clearly.
I’m sure you are thinking, oh great The Drink Cart is going into compliance mode and talking with legal again. Please, if you know me, you know I can’t stand legal. Stay with me.
THE VICTORY LAP FOR THE AI ELBOWS UP CROWD
Now watermark all the AI Content. [Laughter]
“The era of unprovable AI writing just ended,” dropped one post to the tune of 1.7 million views.
Except for one thing. There is no detector. They shipped this watermark but balked at the detector. So everyone celebrating on Linkedin can calm down. Nothing is over. Nothing has changed.
If anyone actually read the thing, you can see that the watermark has several kryptonite features. Paraphrasing, translating it or god forbid you actually edit the content and make it your own.
Those who use AI a lot, especially for editing and proofing, were alarmed because even a typo check could add the watermark for you. Yep. Even if you write it all and brag all about how you didn’t use AI then used it to spell check, it’s watermarked.
This is where the whole celebration makes no sense. This is proof that you aren’t a troglodyte living in the times of the typewriter. The watermark should prove that you aren’t living in the dark ages.
So students and junior copywriters are going to panic that the jig is up. But we’ve lived in this world the whole time.
OpenAI’s first public detector was catching AI text 26 percent of the time 3 years ago. Substack started playing with AI detection recently, likely in an effort to stop the influx of completely boring newsletters that no one writes and nobody reads.
It’s worth noting that since I started writing this newsletter, there are already multiple “remove Claude’s invisible watermark” solutions.
It barely took about 24 hours.
THE ONLY PART THAT MATTERS
As my own creative partner noted this week, nobody cares that you use Adobe to do a bunch of things when you make graphics. Why should we care if you use AI to help you edit, draft and produce content?
Now all of the AI companies will say, they’re all going to comply and watermark. Until someone says, nah.
Currently Anthropic is watermarking the content. But marking the output doesn’t detect the AI writing. Now full disclosure, I use Claude to do some research for me on every issue. I create an outline, unleash it on tracking down links, sources and validating storylines.
So three years ago OpenAI basically tried the same thing and shelved it as paying customers told them they would bolt for models that didn’t.
Anthropic has shipped it anyway. Whether that is to comply with the EU, smug principle or madness I guess we’ll need to know when we get to the Aaron Sorkin Anthropic movie some day.
Some of the takes on this news was wild.
I’m not one to call this some sort of “Marxist theory of value.” But I am still in the camp that thinks this is mostly sane, “When someone digs a ditch in your yard, do you care if they do it by hand or use a machine?”
No. You only care that the ditch got dug.
Back to that Adobe example. Yes, the joy of writing this newsletter is in the writing. That’s the part that is worth doing. Well that and when people get super mad at me in the comments.
But I’m perfectly happy to use AI to help in any way that makes sense so that I can do this, work 60-75 hours on other projects and still have time to think about pizza innovation and obscure baseball rules.
Watermark it. Don’t watermark it. I think people making a spectacle of it is all pretty performative.
And the last thing we should do is hand over what we should or shouldn’t be doing to the same people who can’t even protect the parmesan bank from heat.
COCKTAIL OF THE WEEK: THE ULYSSES
I’m still reading this insane online version of 1927’s Barflies and Cocktails. Worth it for the illustrations alone.
This is the cocktail book by Harry MacElhone from Harry’s New York Bar who served cocktails to Hemingway.
I was looking for something that fit this idea of AI and then found this one called The Ulysses.
The name earns its keep twice. Ulysses is the guy who invented smuggling a payload of soldiers inside a gift everyone willingly accepts — the original invisible watermark, except the soldiers came out at night.
Now the recipe is credited to Aaron Glemby of Shanghai. If I know one thing the provenance of cocktails is actually where a watermark might actually make sense. Even though I have yet to see the movie of the summer as Nolan actually intended. The idea of a cocktail named after that seemed too perfect.
And as the cocktail and 1927 book was going to print, James Joyce was fighting for his publishing life in America.
You see, Joyce’s Ulysses was banned in America. A US publisher was chopping it up and reprinting it anyway because there was no copyright since it was banned. So a petition eventually won a court order to stop it.
Sort of. He could no longer use his name on the publications anymore.
Content stolen, leaving the writer fighting for credit. The same old story, just 100 years apart.
Ulysses Cocktail
1 oz cherry brandy
1 oz dry vermouth
1 oz brandy (cognac)
Shake this with ice, then strain into a cocktail glass with an orange peel. Think of this like a Manhattan that’s been hanging out in a great bar for 100 years and no one is bothering it.
The Drink Cart is the newsletter version of sitting at a really good bar with someone who thinks too much about advertising and won’t shut up about it. Subscribe to get it on Wednesdays and Fridays.