WaterMod: Modular Token-Rank Partitioning for Probability-Balanced LLM WatermarkingShinwoo Park, Hyejin Park, Hyeseon Ahn et al.
Large language models now draft news, legal analyses, and software code with human-level fluency. At the same time, regulations such as the EU AI Act mandate that each synthetic passage carry an imperceptible, machine-verifiable mark for provenance. Conventional logit-based watermarks satisfy this requirement by selecting a pseudorandom green vocabulary at every decoding step and boosting its logits, yet the random split can exclude the highest-probability token and thus erode fluency. WaterMod mitigates this limitation through a probability-aware modular rule. The vocabulary is first sorted in descending model probability; the resulting ranks are then partitioned by the residue rank mod k, which distributes adjacent-and therefore semantically similar-tokens across different classes. A fixed bias of small magnitude is applied to one selected class. In the zero-bit setting (k=2), an entropy-adaptive gate selects either the even or the odd parity as the green list. Because the top two ranks fall into different parities, this choice embeds a detectable signal while guaranteeing that at least one high-probability token remains available for sampling. In the multi-bit regime (k>2), the current payload digit d selects the color class whose ranks satisfy rank mod k = d. Biasing the logits of that class embeds exactly one base-k digit per decoding step, thereby enabling fine-grained provenance tracing. The same modular arithmetic therefore supports both binary attribution and rich payloads. Experimental results demonstrate that WaterMod consistently attains strong watermark detection performance while maintaining generation quality in both zero-bit and multi-bit settings. This robustness holds across a range of tasks, including natural language generation, mathematical reasoning, and code synthesis. Our code and data are available at https://github.com/Shinwoo-Park/WaterMod.
KatFishNet: Detecting LLM-Generated Korean Text through Linguistic Feature AnalysisShinwoo Park, Shubin Kim, Do-Kyung Kim et al.
The rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs) increases the difficulty of distinguishing between human-written and LLM-generated text. Detecting LLM-generated text is crucial for upholding academic integrity, preventing plagiarism, protecting copyrights, and ensuring ethical research practices. Most prior studies on detecting LLM-generated text focus primarily on English text. However, languages with distinct morphological and syntactic characteristics require specialized detection approaches. Their unique structures and usage patterns can hinder the direct application of methods primarily designed for English. Among such languages, we focus on Korean, which has relatively flexible spacing rules, a rich morphological system, and less frequent comma usage compared to English. We introduce KatFish, the first benchmark dataset for detecting LLM-generated Korean text. The dataset consists of text written by humans and generated by four LLMs across three genres. By examining spacing patterns, part-of-speech diversity, and comma usage, we illuminate the linguistic differences between human-written and LLM-generated Korean text. Building on these observations, we propose KatFishNet, a detection method specifically designed for the Korean language. KatFishNet achieves an average of 19.78% higher AUROC compared to the best-performing existing detection method. Our code and data are available at https://github.com/Shinwoo-Park/detecting_llm_generated_korean_text_through_linguistic_analysis.
Marking Code Without Breaking It: Code Watermarking for Detecting LLM-Generated CodeJungin Kim, Shinwoo Park, Yo-Sub Han
Identifying LLM-generated code through watermarking poses a challenge in preserving functional correctness. Previous methods rely on the assumption that watermarking high-entropy tokens effectively maintains output quality. Our analysis reveals a fundamental limitation of this assumption: syntax-critical tokens such as keywords often exhibit the highest entropy, making existing approaches vulnerable to logic corruption. We present STONE, a syntax-aware watermarking method that embeds watermarks only in non-syntactic tokens and preserves code integrity. For its rigorous assessment, we also introduce STEM, a comprehensive framework that balances three critical dimensions: correctness, detectability, and imperceptibility. Across Python, C++, and Java, STONE preserves correctness, sustains strong detectability, and achieves balanced performance with minimal overhead. Our implementation is available at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/STONE-watermarking-AB4B/.
1.1CLJan 16
Steering Language Models Before They Speak: Logit-Level InterventionsHyeseon An, Shinwoo Park, Hyundong Jin et al.
Steering LLMs is essential for specialized applications such as style-sensitive text rewriting, user-adaptive communication, and toxicity mitigation. Current steering methods, such as prompting-based and activation-based approaches, are widely used to guide model behavior. However, activation-based techniques require deep access to internal layers, while prompting-based steering often fails to provide consistent or fine-grained control. In order to address these limitations, we propose a training-free inference-time logit intervention for controllable generation. Our approach utilizes a statistical token score table derived from z-normalized log-odds of labeled corpora to shift the decoding distribution. Empirical evaluations across three diverse datasets focusing on writing complexity, formality, and toxicity demonstrate that our method effectively steers output characteristics, confirming its broad applicability and task-agnostic nature. Our results show that statistically grounded logit steering can achieve large, consistent, and multi-task control gains: up to +47%p accuracy and 50x f1 improvement.
5.3CLMar 16
From Intuition to Calibrated Judgment: A Rubric-Based Expert-Panel Study of Human Detection of LLM-Generated Korean TextShinwoo Park, Yo-Sub Han
Distinguishing human-written Korean text from fluent LLM outputs remains difficult even for trained readers, who can over-trust surface well-formedness. We present LREAD, a Korean-specific instantiation of a rubric-based expert-calibration framework for human attribution of LLM-generated text. In a three-phase blind longitudinal study with three linguistically trained annotators, Phase 1 measures intuition-only attribution, Phase 2 introduces criterion-anchored scoring with explicit justifications, and Phase 3 evaluates a limited held-out elementary-persona subset. Majority-vote accuracy improves from 0.60 in Phase 1 to 0.90 in Phase 2, and reaches 10/10 on the limited Phase 3 subset (95% CI [0.692, 1.000]); agreement also increases from Fleiss' $κ$ = -0.09 to 0.82. Error analysis suggests that calibration primarily reduces false negatives on AI essays rather than inducing generalized over-detection. We position LREAD as pilot evidence for within-panel calibration in a Korean argumentative-essay setting. These findings suggest that rubric-scaffolded human judgment can complement automated detectors by making attribution reasoning explicit, auditable, and adaptable.