There's an underappreciated comment in the other thread about SynthID and OpenAI [0] that captures what (IMO) the hacker ethos on this should be. We care about privacy, we should not accept tools that barcode our every digital move. (note that the counter of "well, they don't do that yet" is not particularly convincing)
Accepting blindly destroying the concept of thruth should not be the hacker ethos either.
I'm pretty sure watermarking is (or soon will be) a requirement for AI generated images in software used in the EU, as part of their regulations for AI transparency.
Its what happens when people in power are paranoid dark-triad types and want to be able to catch anyone who threatens their power and stick it to them..
It's not "every digital move" it's the photos you ask them to create. If you care about privacy use a local model
Do we care about truth?
Without truth freedom and privacy are endangered too.
The other comment talks about laws that can already handle that. How if images, video and audio aren’t reliable proof anymore?
The human ethos should be to never be misleading about the origin and truth of any content you create, forward, or pass on. If we care about honesty we should jail anyone who does so.
Building a tool that tries (and probably fails) to remove the watermark (due to the arms race that large corporate machines will win) is tacitly accepting the barcode. The hacker ethos should be, first and foremost, to run open source models locally without relying on a corporation.