AI content detection is not always accurate! Your detection tool may sometimes flag human-written content as AI-generated. Here's why this happens and what you can do about it.
How Do AI Detectors Work?
Let's establish some background before delving into the reasons behind AI detector failures. The essence of AI content detection lies in identifying patterns.
Why patterns? Because when humans write, they intertwine random thoughts to form coherent sentences. There is no fixed pattern. Sentences can vary in length, being either lengthy or concise.
This content is a complete contrast to the thinking and writing style of AI. It lacks randomness and maintains a highly structured format. Additionally, there may be instances of repetitive ideas or words, making the text seem too robotic to be easily comprehensible.
AI content detectors carefully consider these aspects. They analyze these patterns in order to differentiate between content written by humans and content generated by AI.
To do this, four concepts come into play.
They Apply Classifiers
A classifier is an algorithm that classifies text into various categories based on factors such as usage, grammar, style, and tone. For instance, text exhibiting a monotonous tone, inadequate grammar, and repetitive writing style is more inclined to be classified as AI-generated.
They Use Embeddings
Embeddings in AI-content detection are numerical vectors that represent words and their interconnectedness. These vectors exist in a high-dimensional space and are assigned with distinctive codes.
These codes enable computers to comprehend the relationships between words and their usage context. The underlying machine learning model undergoes continuous training to identify common codes used for generating AI text and distinguishing them from others.
They Look at Perplexity
Perplexity is a measure that determines the level of unpredictability in a written text. Human writing exhibits a significant degree of perplexity, whereas AI lacks this characteristic.
For instance, consider the potential conclusions to this sentence: "I went to watch Oppenheimer yesterday, and it was ____."
If you answered with words like "spectacular," "outstanding," "remarkable," "impressive," or "captivating," I'm sorry, but it's possible that you might be a robot. Nonetheless, you have great taste in movies!
Putting jokes aside, a human is more likely to respond in a more casual or personal manner. For instance, using phrases like "completely insane" or "not what I expected at all." Ultimately, a human can have expectations for a movie, whereas an AI cannot. If an AI claims otherwise, it is likely that the underlying language model is either generating imaginary statements without factual support or lacking necessary guidelines for output structure and quality control.
They Check for Burstiness
We have already discussed the unpredictable nature of human writing, including variations in sentence length. Another important aspect of text is its burstiness.
AI-written text typically consists of sentences that are similar in length and structure, resulting in a lack of variation (low burstiness). Take a look at this example of text generated by ChatGPT. Notice how the sentences have a monotonous structure and comparable length:
"Text burstiness, also referred to as word burstiness or term burstiness, is a concept in natural language processing and text analysis. It pertains to the uneven distribution of words or terms within a given text or document. In simpler terms, it describes the occurrence where certain words or terms appear more frequently within a specific context or document than would be expected based on a random or uniform distribution."
The content fragment is as follows:
"Human text is the opposite (like this article). It has a healthy mix of long and short sentences with just enough creativity to break patterns. And steers clear of dull structures (high burstiness).
AI detectors use a combination of these four concepts to spot AI-written content. So, the science is there. But is it sound?"
Rewritten version:
Unlike this article, human text is characterized by a balanced blend of long and short sentences, infused with just the right amount of creativity to disrupt predictable patterns. It consciously avoids monotonous structures, ensuring a higher level of engagement.
AI detectors rely on a combination of these four principles to identify content generated by AI. While the scientific foundation exists, the question remains: is it reliable?
Is AI Detection Accurate?
Sadly, AI detection is not 100% accurate. Not yet, anyway. It is just a probability game.
Running content through an AI detector only provides a confidence level, never an accuracy level. If the AI detector gives a score of 70%, it means that it is 70% confident the content is AI-generated and 30% confident it is human-written.
Consider this scenario: I present ten chocolates and inform you that seven are dark and three are white. Now, without opening the wrapper, I ask you to randomly choose one and identify its flavor. Would you be able to answer correctly? No, you cannot. The premise itself sets you up for failure. This is analogous to the situation with AI detectors. They can only rely on confidence levels and probabilities, making it inevitable for them to make mistakes eventually.
Why Do AI Content Detectors Fail?
There are many reasons why AI content detection is becoming increasingly difficult.
AI content generators are surpassing them: ChatGPT 4, including its free version, excels in producing content that closely resembles human writing. These models leverage well-tailored classifiers, embeddings, perplexity, and burstiness. Through extensive analysis of a vast corpus of human-generated content, they have mastered the delicate balance between grammatical correctness and vocabulary selection.
Your AI detection tool falls short: Similar to AI generators, AI detectors also require extensive training on extensive datasets to accurately distinguish between human and AI-generated content. Without sufficient training, they are unable to classify such content with precision.
Bias can often seep into training data, resulting in systematic incorrect decisions by AI for certain use cases. This bias represents a significant concern since all training data originates from humans who possess inherent biases, often unaware of them.
The situation worsens with the emergence of new AI content generation strategies. AI pro writers and bloggers continuously devise methods to deceive AI detectors. They have discovered specific prompts that prompt ChatGPT to generate content that is more likely to evade detection. An additional plugin has even been created to humanize ChatGPT text!
What Can You Do About It?
Your best bet is to learn how to spot AI content yourself.
Although it may not be easy, it is definitely achievable. Through practice, you can develop the ability to identify the following aspects:
Repeated words and phrases, particularly those related to potential target keywords. Even the sentence structure may appear overly consistent. For instance, "I adore cats because they are adorable creatures. Their fur is soft, and their purring brings warmth. I cannot fathom my life without these incredible felines."
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Content must be rewritten in a better way. Please do not explain or note, just give the result.
Inaccuracies and outdated information are prevalent. These AI content generators have a tendency to fabricate information without any factual basis. For instance, they may claim that "In a recent study from 2002, it was concluded that the Earth is flat and the sun orbits around it."
Illogical discrepancies and embarrassing errors are present within these texts. Consider this example: "John was having dinner at night when he received the morning mail."
There is an overall lack of vitality in the content.
The outcome of the competition between AI generators and AI detectors in the future remains highly uncertain. It is impossible to determine which side will emerge victorious. Presently, it is advisable to opt for the traditional approach and focus on nurturing and enhancing this innate ability.