MARC: Multi-Bit Watermarking for Autoregressive Audio Generation against Codec Attacks

Generated audio is now used in a range of applications, creating a need to verify its origin after distribution and signal processing. This task is particularly challenging for autoregressive audio generation because codec processing can alter the token sequence recovered from the waveform. Such changes reduce the reliability of watermark detection and payload decoding. Existing methods construct token groups using either intrinsic token representations or substitution patterns caused by transformations. As a result, intrinsic token relationships and codec induced substitutions are modeled separately. In addition, most methods support only zero bit detection. They can determine whether a watermark is present but cannot distinguish individual generated outputs. We propose MARC, a multi-bit generative watermarking method for autoregressive audio generation. MARC integrates intrinsic token representations with confusion patterns obtained through retokenization and multiple codecs, forming a codec-aware token-cluster space. Within this space, payload-driven cluster scheduling is used to embed a multi-bit watermark, while detection and payload decoding are performed on retokenized observations. Experiments on speech, dialogue, and music generation show that MARC achieves an average of 97.3% bit extraction accuracy on unmodified watermarked audio and the watermark can still be extracted under diverse codec attacks. MARC also demonstrates robustness to overwriting attacks.