The Invisible Editorial Layer: Formalizing Undisclosed Inference-Time Steering, Probability Placement, and the Attribution Problem in Deployed Language Models

Large language models (LLMs) are commonly evaluated under the assumption that their observable behavior is primarily determined by model weights, training data, alignment procedures, and user prompts. This view is incomplete. Modern inference pipelines may systematically modify the probability distribution produced by a model immediately before token selection, creating an additional layer of control between frozen weights and observed text. While controlled generation (e.g., PPLM, GeDi, DExperts, FUDGE) and text-watermarking systems (e.g., SynthID-Text) demonstrate the technical maturity of