FreqMark: Frequency-Based Watermark for Sentence-Level Detection of LLM-Generated Text
On the map: LLM safety and security → Watermarking generated content and models
Abstract (arXiv)
The increasing use of Large Language Models (LLMs) for generating highly coherent and contextually relevant text introduces new risks, including misuse for unethical purposes such as disinformation or academic dishonesty. To address these challenges, we propose FreqMark, a novel watermarking technique that embeds detectable frequency-based watermarks in LLM-generated text during the token sampling process. The method leverages periodic signals to guide token selection, creating a watermark that can be detected with Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT) analysis. This approach enables accurate identification of LLM-generated content, even in mixed-text scenarios with both human-authored and LLM-generated segments. Our experiments demonstrate the robustness and precision of FreqMark, showing strong detection capabilities against various attack scenarios such as paraphrasing and token substitution. Results show that FreqMark achieves an AUC improvement of up to 0.98, significantly outperforming existing detection methods.
Key facts. Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Watermarking generated content and models, one of 12 directions in LLM safety and security. Builds on 15 of its 20 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 9 Oct 2024.
Builds on
15 of 20 references.
Closest ancestors · 4
Same direction, newest first
- 2023Are You Copying My Model? Protecting the Copyright of Large Language Models for EaaS via Backdoor Watermark17 May
- 2023Robust Multi-bit Natural Language Watermarking through Invariant Features3 May
- 2023Protecting Language Generation Models via Invisible Watermarking6 Feb
- 2023A Watermark for Large Language Models24 Jan
Other references · 11
- 2019Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformercited by 14,491
- 2019RoBERTa: A Robustly Optimized BERT Pretraining Approachcited by 13,266
- 2023Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Modelscited by 12,865
- 2019The Curious Case of Neural Text Degenerationcited by 2,881
- 2019HuggingFace's Transformers: State-of-the-art Natural Language Processingcited by 2,201
- 2022GPT-NeoX-20B: An Open-Source Autoregressive Language Modelcited by 711
- 2023DetectGPT: Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection using Probability Curvaturecited by 705
- 2019Release Strategies and the Social Impacts of Language Modelscited by 505
- 2023DetectLLM: Leveraging Log Rank Information for Zero-Shot Detection of Machine-Generated Textcited by 207
- 2023The Science of Detecting LLM-Generated Textscited by 126
- 2022Deepfake Text Detection: Limitations and Opportunitiescited by 37
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2025: 3; 2026: 2.
5 papers.
- 2025PMark: Towards Robust and Distortion-free Semantic-level Watermarking with Channel Constraintscited by 14
- 2025FDLLM: A Dedicated Detector for Black-Box LLMs Fingerprintingcited by 4
- 2026A Visual Semantic Adaptive Watermark grounded by Prefix-Tuning for Large Vision-Language Modelcited by 3
- 2025Stylometry recognizes human and LLM-generated texts in short samplescited by 0
- 2026Stability-Aware Feature Design for Robust Watermark Detection in Machine-Generated Textcited by 0
- 2026Stability-Aware Feature Design for Robust Watermark Detection in Machine-Generated Text9 Jun 2026
- 2026A Visual Semantic Adaptive Watermark grounded by Prefix-Tuning for Large Vision-Language Model12 Jan 2026
- 2025PMark: Towards Robust and Distortion-free Semantic-level Watermarking with Channel Constraints25 Sep 2025
- 2025Stylometry recognizes human and LLM-generated texts in short samples1 Jul 2025
- 2025FDLLM: A Dedicated Detector for Black-Box LLMs Fingerprinting27 Jan 2025