Some AI tools are open source so nothing prevents me from modifying the code and removing the part that adds those watermarks.

Even closed source programs can be patched to remove that functionality.

These regulations are aimed at major institutions like banks. Those rely on government-provided privilidges and protectuons to exist. In return we expect they follow some rules.

Nobody cares about AI running in your garage.

The tracking dots stop a huge portion of the low hanging fruit, identity thefts, fake money scams etc. Of course they do nothing to people who know how to hack the printer driver and/or firmware to remove tracking, but they aren't the ones being targeted.

Having trackable data in the biggest AI-generators would again stop a metric fuckton of casually made revenge porn and fake news. It won't stop actual professionals from training their own GPT-3 to do the same thing.