What Lies Ahead for Generative AI Watermarking

This position paper discusses the potential of watermarking as a means to improve transparency and traceability in AI-generated content. Although robustness is often highlighted as a major technical challenge, watermarking has undeniable advantages over other content provenance methods, such as forensics or fingerprinting, making it inevitable. However, more significant unanswered questions remain, such as how to use and trust the detection outcomes and how to ensure interoperability between actors. We should prioritize finding both technical and regulatory answers to these questions - currently scarce in the public discourse - rather than focusing on robustness, which is not truly problematic.