This article examines the inadequacy of cropable watermarks in establishing genuine provenance for AI content, suggesting a need for cryptographic solutions.
The European Commission's new Code of Practice on labelling artificial-intelligence-generated content asks producers to mark their output, but a watermark you can crop, recompress, or strip is a label, not provenance. Genuine compliance needs cryptographic provenance signed at the moment of creation.Originally published at https://mickai.co.uk/articles/a-watermark-you-can-crop-is-not-provenance. Mickai is a Sovereign Intelligence Operating System; the Open Audit Record signs every artificial intelligence action before it executes, post-quantum and offline-verifiable. 101 filed UK patent applications, Mickai LTD (Companies House 17166618).
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Micky Irons (2026) studied this question.
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