When possible, we want to give people a choice—and be clear about what watermarking can and can’t do.

A text watermark helps answer one question: “Was this likely generated by an OpenAI model?”

It works by embedding an invisible statistical signal in text as it’s generated. A detector can look for this signal, and it doesn’t add visible marks or special characters. It doesn’t say who originally wrote the text or who owns it. It doesn’t identify a person, organization, account, conversation, or prompt.

In our testing, watermarking hasn’t affected how capable or fast our models are, or how their responses read.