How do AI Detectors Work?

Written by Adam Morris

Updated August 6, 2023
Woman face detected by AI

In today’s world, where technology has taken over every aspect of our lives, it’s no surprise that even writing is now being scrutinized by artificial intelligence. But how exactly do AI writing detectors work?

AI writing detectors are commonly used by schools, universities, and businesses to detect plagiarism and ensure the originality of written content. These tools have become increasingly popular, but many people are still unaware of how they actually function.

To understand how AI writing detectors work, it’s important to know the basics of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The algorithms that power these detectors are constantly evolving, and they are designed to analyze written content by comparing it to a vast database of existing text.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the technology behind these detectors and explore how they have revolutionized the way we approach writing and plagiarism detection.

Importance Of Detecting AI Content

Organizations, government entities and universities must be able to detect artificial intelligence (AI) generated content in order to ensure that the information or evidence used for research, teaching or other business operations is genuine and produced by humans.

With rapid advancements of AI-generated text tools such as ChatGPT and GPT4, it has become increasingly difficult for traditional methods of detection to differentiate between human-written pieces of paper and falsified ones.

Small AI robot standing on top of keyboard

The importance of detecting AI content extends beyond just academic uses — marketers, SEO companies and other organizations who buy written content would also need to understand the extent to which it was generated using AI tools in order to properly assess its authenticity.

Moreover, if students or employees are able to pass off essays created by automated tools as their own work, then this could have wide-ranging implications on business integrity. As such, it is essential that watermarking detection measures are put in place in order to accurately identify AI produced text from naturally written pieces.

Can Google Detect AI Content?

Google’s capability to detect AI content automatically is uncertain. However, Google does allow manual reviews and it is known to deem AI content as spammy. This has led many to believe that the company may have implemented similar AI technology in their algorithm. Though it’s possible, there is no concrete proof of this yet.

AI content detectors are very accurate and reliable nowadays. Many use artificial intelligence technology to identify patterns and detect text generated by computers or bots.

While this technology has been useful, there is still some skepticism surrounding its accuracy in terms of detecting AI-generated content on Google’s search engine results page (SERP). While Google likely has the capacity to detect such autogenerated content, the exact method remain unknown due to the lack of evidence proving it works for sure.

Illustrated hand holding tablet with Google search result on screen

Google has not officially confirmed whether or not their algorithms detect AI content automatically. This lack of transparency leaves many people wondering if the search engine company is taking steps to prevent spammy artificial intelligence (AI) content from making its way into search results.

Although there are a few AI-detection engines out there that can accurately identify spambot and other robot generated content, it’s impossible to say for certain that Google has implemented a similar system in its algorithm.

It seems more likely that the search giant is using manual reviews and human oversight to prevent robotic content from dominating important browsing results. Currently, this manual process remains the only way to ascertain whether an article is machine written or produced by human minds.

However, with technology improving so rapidly, it’s possible Google could roll out automated artificial intelligence detection capability in due time.

How to Detect AI-Generated Content?

The use of AI generated content has become increasingly popular, as it allows anyone with an internet connection to easily create high quality articles at a low cost. Popular software includes Growthbar, Surfer, Closercopy, and AI Writer to say the least. However, it’s important that you are aware of the possibility of having AI-generated content on your website or blog so that you can ensure your SEO efforts are successful.

Man writing on paper facing laptop on desk

With the help of an AI content detector tool online, you can quickly identify whether areas of text have been created by artificial intelligence or if they were written by a human being.

Using an AI content detection tool will provide accurate data on which articles have been generated by AI, allowing you to make informed decisions about what type of content to include on your website or blog.

Especially in cases where taking competitors’ sites for ideas would be tempting, ensuring that what you’re using wasn’t artificially produced is essential for optimal SEO rankings and other performance metrics. With the use of such tools, it is possible to effectively detect and guard against any unwanted or unrecognized use of AI produced content.

illustration of chat robot producing content

This also ensures that all published materials are genuinely original and produced in-house, giving full assurance that customers are getting authentic articles from your business instead of recycled material from elsewhere.

What Does AI Writing Detection Mean?

AI writing detection is a relatively new form of technology that relies on reverse engineering language patterns to determine what was typed by an AI or a human. This means that the machine breaks down a piece of text to find patterns which can help determine if the writing style used is more in tandem with an AI entity.

By studying how words are arranged and used, the computer can make use of algorithms to increase the likelihood that something was written by an AI rather than a human. The first letter in AI represents ‘Artificial’ – this is key when it comes to helping computers determine whether a document has been written by a human or an AI entity.

Humans are capable of conveying emotion and abstract concepts in ways that machines have yet to grasp, whereas computer generated texts will have less variance according to which words or phrases were selected for use at that time.

AI writing detection works by noticing those subtle differences between what general users would write and what machines produce; when these distinctions can be noted and effectively compared, AI can successfully identify whether a given piece of text was written by an artificial intelligence algorithm or not.

How Do I Know If Content Was Written With AI

AI-generated content is becoming increasingly common, so it’s important to be able to detect whether text has been written by Artificial Intelligence or with other programs such as GPT3 or ChatGPT. Although machine-generated text often does a good job of mimicking human writing, there are some key differences we can look for that indicate that content was generated by AI.

One way to detect AI content is by looking for linguistic features or patterns. This could include checking for higher levels of repetitiveness or monotony, compared to human-written text which usually has a much greater level of complexity and variation in construction.

Pile of rand white cards with english words written

Additionally, structural features such as format, structure and punctuation can also be useful indicators that artificial intelligence has been utilized in generating the content, as AI often lacks the variety of formatting seen in human-written texts due to its attempt at uniformity.

Another way AI text is easier to identify is when the contents ‘look too good to be true’ – as this could be a tell-tale sign that a machine wrote the copy! All these factors should help us determine how to detect AI content as written with GPT3 or ChatGPT tools.

How Do AI Detectors Detect AI

AI writing detection involves sophisticated language models that analyse and detect patterns in the context of the words in a sentence. This requires extensive data analysis to find correlations between different word combinations.

vector illustration of woman using laptop writing content

For example, using the traditional GPT-2 model, a sentence like “The best part of my day is when I wake up for ___” may be analyzed and produce likely results such as ‘school’ or ‘work.’ This is because it will remember all past training data that shows these words in relation before, thereby narrowing down its predictions.

In this way, AI writing detectors can produce accurate and relevant results at speeds much faster than humans could manually check through potential outcomes.

Another way in which AI detection works is by analyzing how certain parts of speech occur relative to one another. It looks at whether certain verbs are being used before or after nouns, or how prepositions tend to occur in relation to specific objects.

Illustration of hands resting on top of laptop with content on screen

By understanding these patterns, it can help develop predetermined language models which accurately predict what should come next based on past contexts. As such, recent advancements involving AI writing detection are proving valuable in helping publishers differentiate real content form generated one while still ensuring that text flows naturally and intuitively.

Best AI Content Detectors

Originality.AI

Originality.AI is a paid AI detector that helps website owners and content creators check for both Artificial Intelligence (AI) and plagiarism in their content. This amazing tool puts the user in firm control of the originality of their creations, allowing them to increase safety of their content against any sort of Google detection or other malicious intent.

Originality.ai homepage

To achieve this, Originality.AI offers a comprehensive yet simple platform which enables users to check for any Artificial Intelligence generated words and phrases as well as perform value-added features such as plagiarism and copyright checks.

Subsequently, these features allow users to save time, money, and anxiety over potential problems related to machine-generated texts on their website. Moreover, reports generated by Originality.AI also provide an easy way to analyze the action taken against identified plagiarized content so that users can remain vigilant concerning quality assurance measures throughout their site’s lifespan.

GLTR (Giant Language Model Test Room)

GLTR is an innovative tool developed by a team from MIT-IBM Watson AI lab and HarvardNLP that leverages the GPT-2 language model to detect generation artifacts across common sampling schemes.

By color-coding words in posts according to their likelihood, this tool can quickly alert experts of when text has been generated artificially by AI rather than written in a natural way by human authors.

For instance, if a word is within the top 10 most likely words for its position in a sentence, it will be highlighted in green; if it ranks between 11-100, it will be highlighted yellow; red indicates the top 1,000 while all remaining words are identified as purple.

GLTR homepage

Given how quickly text can be generated through existing AI models, having a reliable way to detect artificial content is of utmost importance. GLTR helps to adhere to ethical standards such as avoiding manipulation or bias and protecting copyright infringement as any text generated artificially can easily violate these ideals.

Through efficient color-coding of at-risk examples of language use, GLTR helps relieve some of the burden on users and organizations attempting to adhere to these standards while leveraging AI technologies.

Writer AI Content Detector

WriterAI is a leader in content creation and the perfect platform for amateurs, professionals and businesses alike. It has a range of great features that allow users to create high quality written content with ease and it also has an easy-to-use AI content detector which makes checking generated content easier than ever.

The detection score on WriterAI is shown in percentage which gives you insight into how accurate it is and if you ever need help, their customer support team can be reached within minutes.

WriterAI offers an extensive range of tools to help create any type of written content, making it the ideal platform for businesses or individuals looking to produce fast high-quality material. Furthermore, the AI content detector provided by WriterAI provides users with fast, accurate results to help ensure accuracy while creating the desired project.

This detector works by calculating scores which are displayed in percentages that tell how accurate the data is – enabling users to make informed decisions when publishing their work. WriterAI also has a helpful customer service team just an email away if further assistance is required.

OpenAI Output Detector (Hugging Face)

Hugging Face is a powerful open source platform for machine learning. Their goal is to help organizations and individuals make use of the advances in natural language processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

It provides an opportunity for users to share thoughts, insights, and best practices via an interface made with developers in mind. The site also offers a free AI detection tool specifically designed for content authors and bloggers. This tool works by analyzing the text input using deep learning algorithms to identify any potential artificial content.

OpenAI hugging face ai detector homepage

The output provides a score from “fake” to “real,” indicating how likely it is that the content has been written by a machine or human. The more an author uses Hugging Face’s AI detection tool, the more accurate its predictions become.

This makes it particularly beneficial for those who often test out longer pieces of AI-written content. With this tool, authors have access to reasonably accurate detections that can help them assess their work quickly and easily before publishing it online samples.

Furthermore, because this platform has already been adopted by over 5,000 companies and organizations including Grammarly and Google AI, users can rest assured they are receiving reliable results they can trust.

Kazan SEO

Kazan SEO is an all-in-one AI detection toolkit that provides a comprehensive solution for all of your SEO needs. It offers an intuitive and user friendly interface, making it easy to use even for beginners.

In addition to detecting AI, Kazan SEO also boasts several powerful optimization tools to help increase the visibility of your website. Its content generator feature allows you to quickly generate unique and interesting content for your website, while its keyword discovery and research tool can help you uncover hidden gems in the search engine world.

KazanSEO AI detector homepage

The URL text extraction feature makes analyzing the effectiveness of your SEO efforts easy – simply extract the relevant texts from any web page and gain insights into how effective your current tactics are in attracting visitors and improving rankings.

Finally, its co-relational content optimization feature helps optimize your website’s structure by automatically recommending useful keywords that will be beneficial in achieving top rankings on popular search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. All these features make Kazan SEO the perfect choice if you want a comprehensive package that covers all aspects of SEO.

Crossplag

Crossplay is an online AI text detector with the potential to revolutionize the way organizations and writers detect AI-generated content.

Crossplag AI detector homepage

The tool utilizes natural language processing and sophisticated machine learning algorithms to identify patterns of text and assign a severity score which ranges from green to red, where green indicates that the text was written by humanity while red denotes the presence of AI-generated text.

The tool itself is straightforward and user friendly. No special knowledge or experience is required to use this product as all features are readily available upon successful authentication. This makes Crossplag an ideal choice for both individual users looking for extra protection as well as corporate enterprises who are keen on monitoring plagiarism levels in a secure environment.

Content At Scale

Content at Scale is a powerful, free-to-use platform that allows users to identify the creators of text—whether it be AI or human written.

It has multiple key features, such as content curation and SEO optimization, to ensure that your website is accessible and up to date for visitors. Content at Scale is able to easily detect AI-generated writing with its high accuracy rate of around 85%. On top of this, its API can be requested if needed.

Content at scale homepage

As Artificial Intelligence continues to develop and evolve, it’s essential that we understand where our content comes from. With Content at Scale, analyzing text couldn’t get easier! Whether you are a writer looking to improve their work or an AI enthusiast wanting a reliable program to use in their projects, Content at Scale offers a range of helpful tools and features.

You can easily detect which texts are generated by AI models with the accuracy rate of this platform. Plus, the API can answer any complex questions you may have regarding text creation analytics!

Sapling.ai

Sapling is rapidly becoming one of the go-to AI text detectors for customer-facing teams. Sapling includes robust and cutting edge tools that are compatible with Chrome, Google Docs, Outlook, and Word.

The software has a broad range of capabilities; specifically its ability to detect text based on the GPT3 model. This enables businesses to review briefs quickly and accurately while still ensuring accuracy and eliminating any potential errors.

Sapling AI homepage

The incredible array of features present in Sapling make it one of the top free AI text detectors available today. The intuitive drag-and-drop user interface allows even novice or inexperienced users to get up and running without hassle.

Additionally, the integration with multiple popular applications provides convenience for users who are already familiar with these programs – an invaluable boon in terms of usability. With such capabilities at their disposal businesses can have peace-of-mind knowing that their processes will remain secure and accurate.

GPTZero

GPTZero is a revolutionary content detector that is becoming increasingly popular as it can detect AI-generated text with an accuracy of 90%. The tool, which is completely free to use, has been gaining traction among marketers, students and teachers who are looking for an effective way to guard against the use of AI-generated texts. This, in turn, helps them ensure their content remains unique and original.

GPTzero AI homepage

Among its features are its ability to quickly scan data and detect any type of text generated from AI. Unlike other solutions available in the market today that can be expensive, slow or may even miss out on detecting some types of AI-generated text, GPTZero is incredibly fast and effective in detecting such texts without fail.

It’s easy to set up and use, making it ideal for businesses seeking an effective safeguard against content plagiarism. With its growing user base of over one million people across the world, GPTZero is proving itself as a reliable tool set to take over the content generation industry.

Advantages of AI Written Content

AI-written content has several advantages over content created by humans. The first advantage is the time and cost savings that using AI for content writing can provide. As with any writing process, the time to research and actually write a piece of content takes longer when done manually by a human.

By comparison, an AI algorithm can quickly generate fresh, quality written materials in mere seconds. Furthermore, there are no payroll costs or software expenses associated with employing AI-powered content creation, making it substantially more appealing in terms of budgeting for web content creation needs.

The second benefit that using artificial intelligence-driven content offers is the ability to have location-specific language usages encoded into its algorithms. This allows businesses to tailor their language usage to target particular geographic areas they serve while still being able to produce high-quality written materials with low manual effort.

Additionally, computer algorithms can brainstorm new ideas for creating engaging and interesting articles – allowing businesses to go beyond traditional colloquial expressions and create exciting designs that win customer attention and loyalty.

Disadvantages of AI Written Content

Despite the convenience and cost-effectiveness of AI written content, there are a number of drawbacks to consider. AI content can be inaccurate due to its reliance on input data which might be incomplete or outdated.

Additionally, even with advanced algorithms and natural language processing, AI content can read poorly since it lacks the creative thinking process applied when humans write. Furthermore, it’s difficult for businesses to break through the SERP results and stand out from competitors by merely relying on AI written content, as fresh original content is usually ranked higher.

Illustration of arrows missing target on white background

In addition to these problems, AI written content also needs additional tweaks to make it more human friendly. It’s often necessary to find a human editor who will look at AI generated articles and make sure they meet standards in terms of accuracy, flow and style.

This leads to extra overhead costs that need to be accounted for when considering using artificial intelligence to produce your web copy. For all these reasons, although AI written content has some benefits no decision should be made lightly and any potential issues that may arise from their use must be taken into account before implementation.

Conclusion

The use of AI written content has become increasingly popular in the marketing, SEO and online industries as this technology continues to improve. With many reliable and easy-to-use tools available, now is a great time to start implementing AI written content into projects. It can save time and energy while still producing accurate results, although quality may be lower than that of a traditional content writer. 

Overall, with the rise of artificial intelligence within the industry comes great opportunity for marketers, SEO experts and other online specialists to benefit from quick yet accurate written content. To best determine if this solution works for one’s business or project would require assessing the quality and accuracy along with other factors like time saved or cost efficiency which might well make investing in AI writing software worth it.

Adam is a crypto expert & AI enthusiast who has been researching and writing on the topics since 2017.

He’s spoken on numerous podcasts and has been featured in many prominent media publications such as Forbes, CNN & CNBC.