You're missing the point, what will happen is this:
1) in things like tax law, registering with city hall, dealings with the DMV, your phone subscription, insurance contract, ... you will find that one of the new fine prints in the contract will be that you're not allowed to use AI to communicate with them.
2) because of how SynthID works (you need the SynthID keys to verify, which are secret. So the only way to find if text is ChatGPT/Google/Anthropic watermarked is to ask ChatGPT/Google/Anthropic), government and large companies can enforce this against you. That is what the watermark is for. To end any insurance claim written by AI with "you're not allowed to submit AI written insurance claims" and refuse it outright there and then.
"Sorry your request was AI watermarked and pursuant to law 234 of 2025/03/11 chapter 3258 paragraph 33 decile 1299 we hereby close it without response"
3) when they reply, however, they use a custom model that also has custom SynthID keys. You will not even be able to tell their responses are AI written, or at least, you won't be able to prove it. You won't be able to enforce any AI-related rights (ie. the right to talk to a human) you have under the law against large companies.
In other words: this is to make sure that all the advantages AI provides are available to deny your unemployment claim, and to Verizon to charge you more, but completely inaccessible TO YOU when you want to change to a cheaper subscription. They can inundate YOU with AI-written requests BUT YOU CAN'T.
Self-hosting helps because it prevents them from verifying if your responses are AI written, because you can generate non-watermarked AI text and so there is a level playing field.
1) Would that fine print be binding?
2) What actual law/regulation would that currently be that would be used for such an outright refusal?
3) Would that comply with current regulation?
Have you ever dealt with a government or government adjacent company?
It'll be spec'd out so that it's cheaper to bend over and take it than take it to court and prove them wrong.
What's an example of a government adjacent company? And was that in a civil law country?
> 1) Would that fine print be binding?
For government, because it's in law or regulations (ministerial decisions in Europe). For large companies "You agreed to it" (you know, like you agreed to allow Verizon to sell your location data to Palantir)
The other 2 questions I don't understand. My point is that the EU AI directive makes this possible. Makes it possible in ONE direction, while prohibiting the other. AI can be used by government and large companies to spam you and deal with you, and can't be used by you without being 100% up front about that to them (ie. enabling refusal)
1) Laws need parliament, no?
Just agreeing to it isn't necessarily enough at least in some countries.
2) What laws and sections specifically makes that possible? Are there examples of that happening?
3) Where can I find that interpretation of article 50(?)? Some other article? (To the extent that things would need to be labelled/watermarked etc.)
1) Laws need parliament, no?
No. Here is the list of organizations that have the power to make laws in the EU (and JUST the across-the-EU part of that list, within countries, within states, within provinces, within towns there's another list). This is referred to in legal tradition as the "Hierarchy of norms", because there is also a clear order defined.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/eu-hiera...
I think you need to be more precise then on what you mean by "law" and differentiate there and also by what authorises that.
this seems exactly the usual anti-consumer bullshit that is regulated state-by-state (or sometimes by (lack of) FCC/FTC effort, or by the CFPB that is now a zombie)
however, AI doesn't really influence this. already there's a lot of problem with things like Ticketmaster, Apple's walled garden, abuses of IP law (patent trolls, DMCA trolls), etc.
the insurance industry is a prime example of this. the suffering caused by power imbalance is incomprehensible, and yet there's not enough political will to address this.
sure, it's easily possible that some important aspects of our everyday lives will be worsened by bad AI regulation. but IMHO this is wholly an upstream problem, it's a symptom of bad politics. (a byproduct of the Zip2 to Tesla to "democracy with roman salute characteristics" pipeline.)
that said, obviously the foundation to have any chance of a nonpatological market to exist is that self-hosting has to be legal.