How to Detect AI Writing: The [Complete] Guide to AI Content Detection

The New Age of Artificial Intelligence 

If you have been in any part of the Internet since 2022, then you must have heard about Artificial Intelligence. In November 2022, the ChatGPT was opened to the public. Artificial Intelligence is equipped with limitless skills aimed to make our lives easier. Many improvements have been made to AI technology, such as: 

• Launch of Bard, by Google
• Launch of Bing Chat by Bing
• Launch of GPT-4

This technology has an unfolding speed that no one would have imagined! However, a question also arises: To what point do we can rely on AI?

The Infinite AI-Generated Content 

AI chatbots can create any type of content you want. This content can be an article, essay, assignment, website copy, blog post, email, image, table, graph, newsletter, audio, video, feedback, and the list goes on.

AI has become very fluent in creating content. After entering your prompt (details on the desired content), AI can create it in just seconds, with a few clicks! Saving you time and energy.

Educators, students, business owners, writers, digital creators, and many other people use ChatGPT for different purposes. 

For written content, AI uses a large language model (LLM) algorithm. With this, AI analyzes the language and discovers patterns (such as which word should come after another) suitable for the best context. The sentences look right and convincing.

However, the content doesn't always match the appearance. AI can present imprecise information, make comments on non-existent data or articles, and be unable to provide sources for the generated content. This problem is called Artificial Intelligence Hallucination. 

Despite some problems, AI can still generate high-quality content that seems human-written, and there are no complaints! Well, some have. 

AI Writing Detectors: What is it?

AI can create writings on the provided context in just seconds. However, as we mentioned, the information in the writing may not be true. Similarly, although OpenAI claims that ChatGPT creates original content, there are still plagiarism and copyright problems of AI-generated content. This happens because the nature of AI includes analyzing and making interpretations of the already existing text.  

Concerns for the source of the content are especially visible in academic settings and SEO optimization. Academia is definitely against AI-generated content because of the highly ethical problems of dishonesty. For SEO, AI-generated content can harm your search rankings, as SEO-optimized content should be original, helpful, and relevant.

AI writing detectors provide an opportunity to take advantage of the AI benefits without getting caught by detectors or having a watermark for using AI detectors.

Detectors are helpful in a way that prevents misuse of AI. AI is here to help by inspiring, allowing creativity, and facilitating the writing process. Copy and paste should not be seen as an option, which AI detectors are focusing on this goal.

How do AI Detectors Work?

To identify whether a text is human-written or AI-written, many AI detection models are available. These models use two detection methods for authenticity: 

• Linguistic Analysis: The detectors analyze text for semantic meaning and repetitions.
• Comparative Analysis: The tools analyze other AI-generated texts and input text, comparing them and marking their similarities.

AI content detection tools use the data on “perplexity” (aka randomness) and “burstiness” (aka variance).

• Perplexity is a probability distribution to predict a sample. Higher perplexity refers to a higher chance of AI generation in text.
• Burstiness refers to the variation in length and complexity of sentences. If sentences have similar complexity and length, there is less variation, which is an indicator of AI-generated content.

AI content checkers include classification systems that are trained with large databases of all types of content written by both AI and humans.

If we were to gather all this information together, in short, AI detection includes classifiers, using machine learning algorithms and natural language processing to analyze text and assign a confidence score.

There are many ChatGPT detection tools. Although these AI detection tools can help with identifying, they are not always accurate. False positives are very common for AI text detectors. It was stated that most students are having a hard time with these defective outcomes. As Aı text generators have limitations, so do AI text detectors. 

Then, can you differentiate human-written text from AI-written text?

How can I Detect an AI Written Text?

Let’s say that you are an educator, giving assignments to your students to facilitate their learning process. Then, heard some rumors about AI usage among students. How can you differentiate the rumored papers from many others without accusing them falsely?

Here are a few tricks and tips to identify AI written content: 

1. Lack of Human Touch and Emotions

This is one of the best and easiest ways to spot AI-generated content. Mostly, humans incorporate their ideas and opinions in their writings. This is what makes human writing more powerful and unique. In contrast, AI uses a matter-of-fact approach to writing. Knowledge on the topic, like facts and statistics, is provided, but no opinion or beliefs can be found in the text. Similarly, a trained robot cannot incorporate emotions into the writing. So, phrases such as “like, cute, love, believe” cannot be found in an AI-generated text.

• In this example, we provided ChatGPT with the prompt, “Write me a paragraph about slides.” The text only contains facts; no personal touch can be found.

2. Tone and Style

The tones of computers and humans are totally different. Computers can only have one tone throughout text because the output is actually the data strung together. In other words, as explained in the LLMs, AI analyzes and uses which sentences are most likely to come after another. Thus, all sentences contain a similar tone because they are more likely to come after each other. Forasmuch as humans, thinking and writing are inseparable processes. Through this process, the tone changes inevitably. 

The style of the computers is different from human-written content, too. Sentences can be too long or too short to be seen as human-written. The text overall is too formulaic and structured. Similarly, the output text doesn’t include transition words, which are essential to human writing. 

• Let’s clarify this subject by examining an output by ChatGPT. We have provided the prompt of “Write me a short essay on human language.”

3. Accuracy

We mentioned earlier on the topic of Hallucinations of Artificial Intelligence. AI can put erroneous information in the writings in a convincing tone. It was found that there is a 20% chance that output will include incorrect information. 

Especially for ChatGPT, there is a concern for up-to-date information. The data set of ChatGPT was scraped from the Internet in September 2021. In other words, ChatGPT can only provide accurate information on subjects before 2021. So, for questions or inputs that require answers beyond this date, ChatGPT has a higher chance of producing faulty output.

While looking for whether a text is generated by AI, it is important to fact-check the content and the sources provided.

4. Authorship

This is another sign of AI-written content. You may realize some problems in the text but may not be sure whether it is AI-generated or not. For clarification, you can conduct a personal search and take a look at the author’s other works. With a quick search on Google or Google Scholar about the author's background, you can find other writings and compare them with each other. You can compare the style, tone, and writing content. If the writings don't match up, then there is a good possibility that it is AI-generated. 

Some AI detection tools also use this method. By feeding the tool with past works, it can compare how likely the same person wrote the latest piece. Turnitin, a content detection tool popular in academic settings, uses this method. The last submitted paper is examined to understand whether it was written by the same person who authored the old papers. The basis of the detection in Turnitin relies on whether the same person wrote the article or not. 

5. Repetitive Language and Keyword Stuffing

Another telltale sign of AI-generated content is repeated words. AI has a tendency towards including keywords in the input to the output. AI probably knows the context of the input. Nonetheless, it is not as knowledgeable as an expert on this topic. Replacing words with synonyms and adding variation to the text can be a challenge for AI. Though this shows output is related to the input, repeated words can be a red flag. Also, for SEO optimization, repeating keywords to the point of spamming is no good. Google warns against repeating, indicating that this will cause content to be unnatural, time-consuming, and non-informative. Keywords should be used strategically and systematically in SEO-friendly content.

• Let’s illustrate our point with an example. Here, we asked ChatGPT about AI-generated content. In the text, you can see that AI has been used a number of times (17 times for the whole text) in a short answer.

6. Direct Detection

If you still not sure about your text after all the tests, the last resort is AI text detectors. As of right now, the best tool we have to detect AI is AI. AI detector tools examine the texts to conduct linguistic and comparative analyses. Scores on perplexity and burstiness allow tools to determine this distinction. 

Most of the tools are easy to use, with a user-friendly interface. There are many free options available. Accuracy rates of the AI detectors can vary but generally are higher than %90. However, it should be noted that there is still room for false errors; thus, while deciding whether a text is human-written or AI-generated, the use of multiple detection tools is advised. Similarly, manual analysis, as we mentioned above, should complement these detection software tools.

Which Tools are the Best AI Detectors?

Originality AI Checker

Originality is one of the best AI content detector tools in the market. Originality is able to detect texts generated by Chat GPT-4 with great accuracy (99%) with just a click! It recognizes texts using Chat GPT, GPT-2, GPT-3, GPT-4, and Bard. 

• Originality provides a plagiarism checker, Chrome extension, for your browser.
• The app supports team workspace and collaboration.
• The tool is specially created for SEO professionals to determine whether the content is original. 
• Originality is the only tool that can detect the usage of paraphrasing tools, like Quillbot.
• Lastly, Originality highlights the sentences created by AI, produces a readability score on Google, and creates a report that can be saved on your dashboard.

GPTZero

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GPTZero is a free AI content detection checker. It is one of the efficient classifier tools to detect AI-written content, supported by DeepAnalyseTM technology. GPTZero’s dataset has enormous training data, with over 10M+ articles. Thus, it is able to distinguish human-written and AI-written content with a %98 accuracy rate. Similar to Originality, it can recognize texts using Chat GPT, GPT-2, GPT-3, GPT-4, Bard, Llama, and other AI models.

• GPTZero supports multiple languages, and it is FREE to use worldwide.
• Word documents, Google Docs, and PDF files are supported.
• GPTZero is specially developed for students, educators and academic settings.
• The percentage score shows the likelihood of the input text created by AI.
• The tool allows adjustments on the threshold for the detection of AI in API settings.

Copyleaks AI Content Detector

Copyleaks is an AI detection company popular for its convenient use. Copyleaks is able to detect GPT-4 and Bard content. It was found to have a 99.1% AI content detection accuracy rate to detect AI-generated content.

• Copyleaks offers a FREE plan. However, some features are only available for subscription use.
• Copyleaks has a plagiarism scanning that can be bought separately.
• The tool scans various text types: URLs, codes, and images.

Turnitin AI Writing Detection

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Turnitin’s AI Writing Detection tool is one of the most used tools. As the Turnitin system was already used as a plagiarism tool for schools and institutions, AI detection became a bonus feature of the system. Mainly used by universities and high-schools, Turnitin AI Detector is the favorite tool of educators. The tool has a 98% accuracy rate for detecting AI-generated grammar and catching plagiarism.

• Turnitin AI Detector can provide percentages on how much of the writing is AI-generated.
• The tool can scan documents and PDF files. 
• Turnitin AI Detector is not available for individual use. 

Undetectable Slides with Decktopus

With Decktopus, you can create slides with undetectable AI content. Decktopus AI is a presentation assistant that helps you to make slides in just minutes! You should simply answer a few simple questions about your slide:  

1. What is the topic of your slide?
2. Who is your target audience?
3. What is your aim with this presentation?
4. How long will your presentation take?
5. Which template do you want to use?

Afterward, a slide that is ready to present will be created! Decktopus creates slides specifically for you and your needs! Thus, there is no need to worry about the originality of the content! Decktopus offers 100% original content that is undetectable from AI content detectors. 

With the AI assistant provided in Decktopus, there is no need to worry about your presentation.

• In the Q&A section of the tool, you can get ready for the questions and discussions that can emerge in your presentation.
• The AI assistant also provides suggestions or tips for a better presentation.
• To simplify presenting, slide notes can be created to be ques and printed on the slide cards! 
• By using the Magic button, you can get everything you need!

Frequently Asked Questions

1.What is the best FREE AI writing detector?

GPTZero

2.What is the best FREE slide tool with original content?

Decktopus

3.How accurate are AI writing detectors?

It changes but ranges between 89% to 99.1%

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