Belgian Husband Races to Have ChatGPT Write Next 40 Years of Anniversary Cards Before Watermark Kicks In

BRUGES, Belgium — With OpenAI preparing to hide an invisible watermark in text that ChatGPT writes for users in the European Union, local husband Pieter Vanderploeg, 41, spent Monday night having the chatbot write every anniversary card, birthday message and apology he expects to need through the year 2066.

OpenAI said Monday that the watermark, part of its compliance with the EU AI Act, will roll out over the coming weeks. It works by subtly shaping the chatbot’s word choices and travels with the text when it is copied and pasted, a detail Vanderploeg took as a personal deadline.

“I’ve got 40 anniversaries, 40 birthdays, 40 Valentine’s Days and roughly 600 ‘I’m sorry about the thing with your mother’ texts banked,” said Vanderploeg, who has sorted them in a spreadsheet by year and severity. “Our 25th is in there. It’s very moving. It mentions a tapestry.”

The stockpile also includes contingency drafts, among them a 2049 card for “if we’ve moved to Spain,” a 2058 message for “if she’s taken up pottery” and one file labeled simply “if I forget again (general).”

Dr. Ingrid Thesaurusen, director of the Ghent Institute for Romantic Linguistics, said the rush is continent-wide. “Between now and the rollout, European men will generate more heartfelt sentiment than in the previous 2,000 years combined,” she said. “Nearly all of it describes marriage as a journey.”

OpenAI’s own testing found that swapping about 10% of the words for synonyms cut detection from roughly 92% to 66%, a figure Vanderploeg has written on a sticky note above his desk under the heading “Plan B.”

As of press time, Vanderploeg’s wife, Els, had reportedly asked ChatGPT to draft her replies to all of them in advance.