check if an essay was written by ai

Free AI Detector

Identify AI-generated content, including ChatGPT and Copilot, with Scribbr's free AI detector

Improve your writing

• Avoid accidental plagiarism
• Easy and free to use
• Works with all English dialects

Why use Scribbr’s AI Detector

Authority on ai and plagiarism.

Our plagiarism and AI detector tools and helpful content are used by millions of users every month.

Advanced algorithms

Our AI checker is built using advanced algorithms for detecting AI-generated content.

Unlimited free AI checks

Perform an unlimited number of AI checks for free, ensuring all of your work is authentic.

User-Friendly Interface

Our AI Detector is easy to use, with a simple interface that makes AI content detection quick and efficient.

No sign-up required

Start detecting AI-generated content instantly, without having to create an account.

Confidentiality guaranteed

Rest easy knowing your submissions remain private; we do not store or share your data.

AI Detector for ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and more

Scribbr’s AI Detector confidently detects texts generated by the most popular tools, like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Our advanced AI checker tool can detect the latest models, like GPT4 with high accuracy.

Note that no AI Detector can provide complete accuracy ( see our research ). As language models continue to develop, detection tools will always have to race to keep up with them.

The AI Detector is perfect for...

Confidently submit your papers

Scribbr’s AI Detector helps ensure that your essays and papers adhere to your university guidelines.

• Verify the authenticity of your sources ensuring that you only present trustworthy information.
• Identify any AI-generated content, like ChatGPT, that might need proper attribution.

Check the authenticity of your students’ work

More and more students are using AI tools, like ChatGPT in their writing process. Our AI checker helps educators detect AI content in the text.

• Analyze the content submitted by your students, ensuring that their work is actually written by them.
• Promote a culture of honesty and originality among your students.

Prevent search algorithm penalties

Using our AI text detector ensures ensure that your content is indexed by publishing high-quality and original content.

• Analyze the authenticity of articles written by external contributors or agencies before publishing them.
• Deliver unique content that engages your audience and drives traffic to your website.

AI Detectors vs. Plagiarism Checkers

AI detectors and plagiarism checkers are both used to verify the originality and authenticity of a text, but they differ in terms of how they work and what they’re looking for.

AI Detector or ChatGPT Detector

AI detectors try to find text that looks like it was generated by an AI writing tool, like ChatGPT. They do this by measuring specific characteristics of the text like sentence structure and length, word choice, and predictability — not by comparing it to a database of content.

Plagiarism Checker

Plagiarism checkers try to find text that is copied from a different source. They do this by comparing the text to a large database of web pages, news articles, journals, and so on, and detecting similarities — not by measuring specific characteristics of the text.

Scribbr & academic integrity

Scribbr is committed to protecting academic integrity. Our tools, like the AI Detector , Plagiarism Checker , and Citation Generator are designed to help students produce quality academic papers and prevent academic misconduct.

We make every effort to prevent our software from being used for fraudulent or manipulative purposes.

Your questions, answered

Scribbr’s AI Detectors can confidently detect most English texts generated by popular tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Our free AI detector can detect GPT2, GPT3, and GPT3.5 with average accuracy, while the Premium AI Detector has high accuracy and the ability to detect GPT4.

Our AI Detector can detect most texts generated by popular tools like ChatGPT and Bard. Unfortunately, we can’t guarantee 100% accuracy. The software works especially well with longer texts but can make mistakes if the AI output was prompted to be less predictable or was edited or paraphrased after being generated.

Our research into the best AI detectors indicates that no tool can provide complete accuracy; the highest accuracy we found was 84% in a premium tool or 68% in the best free tool.

The AI score is a percentage between 0% and 100%, indicating the likelihood that a text has been generated by AI.

No, Scribbr’s AI Detector will only give you a percentage between 0% and 100% that shows how much AI-generated content is in your text.

No. Our AI content checker can only inform you of AI-generated content. Our Plagiarism Checker can help prevent unintentional plagiarism in your writing.

Detect ChatGPT3.5, GPT4 and Gemini in seconds

Get in touch with questions.

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Learn how to use AI tools responsibly

How to cite chatgpt, how to write a paper with chatgpt, how do ai detectors work, university policies on ai writing tools.

GPT Essay Checker for Students

How to Interpret the Result of AI Detection

To use our GPT checker, you won’t need to do any preparation work!

Take the 3 steps:

• Copy and paste the text you want to be analyzed,
• Click the button,
• Follow the prompts to interpret the result.

Our AI detector doesn’t give a definitive answer. It’s only a free beta test that will be improved later. For now, it provides a preliminary conclusion and analyzes the provided text, implementing the color-coding system that you can see above the analysis.

It is you who decides whether the text is written by a human or AI:

• Your text was likely generated by an AI if it is mostly red with some orange words. This means that the word choice of the whole document is nowhere near unique or unpredictable.
• Your text looks unique and human-made if our GPT essay checker adds plenty of orange, green, and blue to the color palette.
• 🔮 The Tool’s Benefits

🤖 Will AI Replace Human Writers?

✅ ai in essay writing.

• 🕵 How do GPT checkers work?

Chat GPT in Essay Writing – the Shortcomings

• The tool doesn’t know anything about what happened after 2021. Novel history is not its strong side. Sometimes it needs to be corrected about earlier events. For instance, request information about Heathrow Terminal 1 . The program will tell you it is functioning, although it has been closed since 2015.
• The reliability of answers is questionable. AI takes information from the web which abounds in fake news, bias, and conspiracy theories.
• References also need to be checked. The links that the tool generates are sometimes incorrect, and sometimes even fake.
• Two AI generated essays on the same topic can be very similar. Although a plagiarism checker will likely consider the texts original, your teacher will easily see the same structure and arguments.
• Chat GPT essay detectors are being actively developed now. Traditional plagiarism checkers are not good at finding texts made by ChatGPT. But this does not mean that an AI-generated piece cannot be detected at all.

🕵 How Do GPT Checkers Work?

An AI-generated text is too predictable. Its creation is based on the word frequency in each particular case.

Thus, its strong side (being life-like) makes it easily discernible for ChatGPT detectors.

Once again, conventional anti-plagiarism essay checkers won’t work there merely because this writing features originality. Meanwhile, it will be too similar to hundreds of other texts covering the same topic.

Here’s an everyday example. Two people give birth to a baby. When kids become adults, they are very much like their parents. But can we tell this particular human is a child of the other two humans? No, if we cannot make a genetic test. This GPT essay checker is a paternity test for written content.

❓ GPT Essay Checker FAQ

Updated: Jul 19th, 2024

• Abstracts written by ChatGPT fool scientists - Nature
• How to... use ChatGPT to boost your writing
• Will ChatGPT Kill the Student Essay? - The Atlantic
• ChatGPT: how to use the AI chatbot taking over the world
• Overview of ChatGPT - Technology Hits - Medium
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IvyPanda's free online GPT essay checker is much more effective than traditional plagiarism checkers. Find out if an academic paper was written by a human or a machine. You will also find a detailed guide on how to interpret the analysis results.

More than an AI detector Preserve What's Human

Since inventing AI detection, GPTZero incorporates the latest research in detecting ChatGPT, GPT4, Google-Gemini, LLaMa, and new AI models, and investigating their sources.

Was this text written by a human or AI ?

The most precise, reliable AI detection results on the market

Scan top ai models.

Classify AI text from major AI models, from ChatGPT to Gemini, Llama, Claude and more.

Get unparalleled, advanced accuracy

Independent benchmarking shows GPTZero Advanced Scan has best-in-class accuracy.

Verify real writing

Opt for video replay and human writing verification to prove your authentic voice

Connect your classroom

Easily integrate with learning management systems including Canvas, Moodle, and Google Classroom.

Improve with AI Tutor

Build responsible writing habits with custom AI-powered writing feedback tools.

Detect plagiarism

Ensure originality and check if content was copied from outside sources without attribution.

Discover our Detection Dashboard

Access a deeper scan with unprecedented levels of AI text analysis.

Source scanning

Scan documents for plagiarism and our AI copyright check.

Easily scan dozens of files at once, organize, save, and download reports.

Leading research in AI content detection modeling

Our AI detection model contains 7 components that process text to determine if it was written by AI. We utilize a multi-step approach that aims to produce predictions that reach maximum accuracy, with the least false positives. Our model specializes in detecting content from Chat GPT, GPT 4, Gemini, Claude and LLaMa models.

Quantify AI with Deep Scan

INTEGRATIONS

Built-in AI detection for classrooms and workspaces

Bring the most precise AI content checker directly into the software you use every day.

AI Text Detection and Analysis Trusted by Leading Organizations

Gptzero reviews.

GPTZero was the only consistent performer, classifying AI-generated text correctly. As for the rest … not so much.

GPTZero has been incomparably more accurate than any of the other AI checkers. For me, it’s the best solution to build trust with my clients.

This tool is a magnifying glass to help teachers get a closer look behind the scenes of a document, ultimately creating a better exchange of ideas that can help kids learn.

The granular detail provided by GPTZero allows administrators to observe AI usage across the institution. This data is helping guide us on what type of education, parameters, and policies need to be in place to promote an innovative and healthy use of AI.

After talking to the class, each student we compiled with GPTZero as possibly using AI ended up telling us they did, which made us extremely confident in GPTZero’s capabilities.

Sign up for GPTZero. Its feedback aligns well with my sense of what is going on in the writing - almost line-for-line.

I'm a huge fan of the writing reports that let me verify my documents are human-written. The writing video, in particular, is a great way to visualize the writing process!

Excellent chrome extension. I ran numerous tests on human written content and the results were 100% accurate.

Outstanding! This is an extraordinary tool to not only assess the end result but to view the real-time process it took to write the document.

GPTZero is the best AI detection tool for teachers and educators.

General FAQs about our AI Detector

Everything you need to know about GPTZero and our chat gpt detector. Can’t find an answer? You can talk to our customer service team .

What is GPTZero?

GPTZero is the leading AI detector for checking whether a document was written by a large language model such as ChatGPT. GPTZero detects AI on sentence, paragraph, and document level. Our model was trained on a large, diverse corpus of human-written and AI-generated text, with a focus on English prose. To date, GPTZero has served over 2.5 million users around the world, and works with over 100 organizations in education, hiring, publishing, legal, and more.

How do I use GPTZero?

Simply paste in the text you want to check, or upload your file, and we'll return an overall detection for your document, as well as sentence-by-sentence highlighting of sentences where we've detected AI. Unlike other detectors, we help you interpret the results with a description of the result, instead of just returning a number.

To get the power of our AI detector for larger texts, or a batch of files, sign up for a free account on our  Dashboard .

If you want to run the AI detector as your browse, you can download our  Chrome Extension, Origin , which allows you to scan the entire page in one click.

When should I use GPTZero?

Our users have seen the use of AI-generated text proliferate into education, certification, hiring and recruitment, social writing platforms, disinformation, and beyond. We've created GPTZero as a tool to highlight the possible use of AI in writing text. In particular, we focus on classifying AI use in prose.

Overall, our classifier is intended to be used to flag situations in which a conversation can be started (for example, between educators and students) to drive further inquiry and spread awareness of the risks of using AI in written work.

Does GPTZero only detect ChatGPT outputs?

No, GPTZero works robustly across a range of AI language models, including but not limited to ChatGPT, GPT-4, GPT-3, GPT-2, LLaMA, and AI services based on those models.

Why GPTZero over other detection models?

• GPTZero is the most accurate AI detector across use-cases, verified by multiple independent sources, including TechCrunch, which called us the best and most reliable AI detector after testing seven others.
• GPTZero builds and constantly improves our own technology. In our competitor analysis, we found that not only does GPTZero perform better, some competitor services are actually just forwarding the outputs of free, open-source models without additional training.
• In contrast to many other models, GPTZero is finetuned for student writing and academic prose. By doing so, we've seen large improvements in accuracies for this use-case.

What are the limitations of the classifier?

The nature of AI-generated content is changing constantly. As such, these results should not be used to punish students. We recommend educators to use our behind-the-scene Writing Reports as part of a holistic assessment of student work. There always exist edge cases with both instances where AI is classified as human, and human is classified as AI. Instead, we recommend educators take approaches that give students the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding in a controlled environment and craft assignments that cannot be solved with AI .

The accuracy of our model increases as more text is submitted to the model. As such, the accuracy of the model on the document-level classification will be greater than the accuracy on the paragraph-level, which is greater than the accuracy on the sentence level.

The accuracy of our model also increases for text similar in nature to our dataset. While we train on a highly diverse set of human and AI-generated text, the majority of our dataset is in English prose, written by adults.

Our classifier is not trained to identify AI-generated text after it has been heavily modified after generation (although we estimate this is a minority of the uses for AI-generation at the moment).

Currently, our classifier can sometimes flag other machine-generated or highly procedural text as AI-generated, and as such, should be used on more descriptive portions of text.

What can I do as an educator to reduce the risk of AI misuse?

• Help students understand the risks of using AI in their work (to learn more, see this article ), and value of learning to express themselves. For example, in real-life, real-time collaboration, pitching, and debate, how does your class improve their ability to communicate when AI is not available?
• Ask students to write about personal experiences and how they relate to the text, or reflect on their learning experience in your class.
• Ask students to critique the default answer given by Chat GPT to your question.
• Require that students cite real, primary sources of information to back up their specific claims, or ask them to write about recent events.
• Assess students based on a live discussion with their peers, and use peer assessment tools (such as the one provided by our partner, Peerceptiv ).
• Ask students to complete their assignments in class or in an interactive way, and shift lectures to be take-home.
• Ask students to produce multiple drafts of their work that they can revise as peers or through the educator, to help students understand that assignments are meant to teach a learning process.
• Ask students to produce work in a medium that is difficult to generate, such as powerpoint presentations, visual displays, videos, or audio recordings.
• Set expectations for your students that you will be checking the work through an AI detector like GPTZero, to deter misuse of AI.

I'm an educator who has found AI-generated text by my students. What do I do?

Firstly, at GPTZero, we don't believe that any AI detector is perfect. There always exist edge cases with both instances where AI is classified as human, and human is classified as AI. Nonetheless, we recommend that educators can do the following when they get a positive detection:

• Ask students to demonstrate their understanding in a controlled environment, whether that is through an in-person assessment, or through an editor that can track their edit history (for instance, using our Writing Reports through Google Docs). Check out our list of several recommendations on types of assignments that are difficult to solve with AI.
• Ask the student if they can produce artifacts of their writing process, whether it is drafts, revision histories, or brainstorming notes. For example, if the editor they used to write the text has an edit history (such as Google Docs), and it was typed out with several edits over a reasonable period of time, it is likely the student work is authentic. You can use GPTZero's Writing Reports to replay the student's writing process, and view signals that indicate the authenticity of the work.
• See if there is a history of AI-generated text in the student's work. We recommend looking for a long-term pattern of AI use, as opposed to a single instance, in order to determine whether the student is using AI.

What data did you train your model on?

Our model is trained on millions of documents spanning various domains of writing including creating writing, scientific writing, blogs, news articles, and more. We test our models on a never-before-seen set of human and AI articles from a section of our large-scale dataset, in addition to a smaller set of challenging articles that are outside its training distribution.

How do I use and interpret the results from your API?

To see the full schema and try examples yourself, check out our  API documentation.

Our API returns a document_classification field which indicates the most likely classification of the document. The possible values are HUMAN_ONLY , MIXED , and AI_ONLY . We also provide a probability for each classification, which is returned in the class_probabilities field. The keys for this field are human , ai or mixed . To get the probability for the most likely classification, the predicted_class field can be used. The class probability corresponding to the predicted class can be interpreted as the chance that the detector is correct in its classification. I.e. 90% means that 90% of the time on similar documents our detector is correct in the prediction it makes. Lastly, each prediction comes with a confidence_category field, which can be high , medium , or low . Confidence categories are tuned such that when the confidence_category field is high 99.1% of human articles are classified as human, and 98.4% of AI articles are classified as AI.

Additionally, we highlight sentences that been detected to be written by AI. API users can access this highlighting through the highlight_sentence_for_ai field. The sentence-level classification should not be solely used to indicate that an essay contains AI (such as ChatGPT plagiarism). Rather, when a document gets a MIXED or AI_ONLY classification, the highlighted sentence will indicate where in the document we believe this occurred.

Are you storing data from API calls?

No. We do not store or collect the documents passed into any calls to our API. We wanted to be overly cautious on the side of storing data from any organizations using our API. However, we do store inputs from calls made from our dashboard. This data is only used in aggregate by GPTZero to further improve the service for our users. You can refer to our privacy policy for more details.

How do I cite GPTZero for an academic paper?

You can use the following bibtex citation:

AI Content Detector

• Deep Search
• Check in real time
• Data Safety

We Can Turn Your Paper Into a Perfect One

Why do we stand out.

AI DETECTOR FOR AI WRITTEN CONTENT

Content crafting has always been an uneasy task for most students, especially when dealing with different types of essays. It is a time- and effort-consuming activity to which you should devote your time. Advanced Artificial Intelligence technology today has brought more opportunities to simplify the process of writing an essay. It generates the necessary content when typing in a detailed and correct request. But the matter of a non plagiarised essay is still of high priority. Using a ChatGPT checker tool makes sense for detecting AI content and turning your work into a unique one. So how can you benefit from AI content detection tools? Follow us to learn more.

This guide will give you insightful information about an AI content detection tool. Uniqueness is an essential part of writing, and you can make your work accurate with the help of our AI detection tool free. It allows you to identify AI written content to paraphrase it and make it human written content. If you find it hard to cope, you can always get online essay help from our customer service. Our experts are there for you to assist you and give a hand when you need it most. So, let’s find out the benefits of using this tool.

What is an AI Content Detector

AI text detector tool is a software that can recognize content generated by OpenAI Chat GPT through machine learning algorithms containing natural language processing techniques. It uses a huge dataset of human and AI-generated texts. This is one of the after-sought tools every student should implement for their academic purpose.

Leveraging ChatGPT in writing an essay saves you precious time. However, teachers and professors are also aware of AI content generators. They estimated the capabilities of such tech products and are very considerate of the essay’s originality. They also use an AI checker to identify whether a work is written by humans.

For this reason, an AI essay checker free tool is the best solution today to make your work slick and unique. Even if you craft an essay independently, an AI writer detector helps you to detect AI content that needs proofreading. So, you should deliver an original text when handing out your essay.

Accuracy Is Above All

By using GPT-3 output detector, you will gain only benefits and chances to polish up your work. The OpenAI Chat GPT detector highlights parts of the content recognized as machine content by AI algorithms. So, let’s look at the main advantages of implementing a free AI content detector.

• AI detection tool accuracy. This feature is number one for this tool though the level of accuracy might depend on the AI writing detector you choose. Our content checker guarantees accuracy in detecting AI content and plagiarism.
• Simplicity in usage. It takes only a few steps to identify whether your essay contains AI-generated text: open our tool to detect ChatGPT, copy and paste your text. If you use our service to write your essay , you can be sure that our expert writers always check your work with an AI GPT detector.
• Speed checking. You won’t have to wait long to receive results about your text originality. Regardless of the huge data set it processes, the OpenAI detector tool manages it pretty fast.

Thanks to the high accuracy of our AI content checker, you can finalize your essay and improve its uniqueness.

Benefits to Check Text with AI Essay Detector

AI essay detector free is deployed along with plagiarism checkers today. These two instruments are crucial in crafting original and engaging content that will be highly valued. That’s why it is worth checking your text with this tool, as AI generates a myriad of information. You can’t even know whether you are reading an article written by a human or an AI.

Using a GPT content generator is not a crime. It brings some positive things to writers, like time-saving, correct grammar and spelling, and a solid content search to make your essay complete. But the uniqueness and data accuracy of such essays suffers as AI analyses much training data that can be outdated or presented in a complex way to comprehend. For this reason, AI content detectors are the best solution for improving the uniqueness of your content. 

Steps to Bypass AI Detection

We know how crucial it is for you to cope with your academic writing. We use our Chat GPT detector when dealing with students’ work, like any type of essay, research paper, coursework, dissertation, etc. If you are working on your essay individually, you can visit our website PapersOwl.com and check it with our detector for free. You will find all you need there and contact real experts to help you with any questions or concerns.

Here are a few steps we take to bypass AI essay detection:

• Alternative paraphrasing. AI-generated text can be hard to read. So, it is better to change the phrases highlighted by the detector and add simple and understandable sentences.
• Using synonyms. The phenomenon of tautology can be found in any text, including AI-written text. In this case, we offer to use proper synonyms where there are many repetitions of the same word form.
• Including natural language. To add more creativity to your text, it is a good idea to use idioms, rhetorical questions, or colloquialisms. But don’t overuse them, and consider the type of essay you are writing.

We also offer editing and proofreading services. You can approach us to rewrite essay for you if you feel a lack of creativity or have no idea how to increase the uniqueness of your assignment.

How does AI detector work?

AI detectors are software that detects any data generated by an AI chatbox. It uses billions of training data on the web to detect AI content. Thus, AI technology is a reliable tool trained to analyze written content for specific patterns, language model, etc. to find AI generated texts for any user.   

Is it only ChatGPT detector ?

No. Our Chat GPT detector includes a wide diapason of language models to identify AI-generated texts. Among them are ChatGPT, GPT-4, GPT-3, Jasper, Google Bard, and other language models.

How accurate is AI detection?

Our AI detector ChatGPT is highly accurate as it recognizes the latest AI programs like ChatGPT, GPT-4, and other language models. They are trained on the updated information stored on the Internet to see any probability of plagiarism in the articles.

What languages does the AI detector support?

The AI checker currently supports only English. Its development focused only on one language to polish up its functioning. Other languages are in the process of integration.

HOW DOES AI DETECTOR WORK?

• Paste text and our AI detector ensures if your content is generated by ChatGPT, GPT4, GPT3, Bard, Claude, Gemini, and other advanced large language models (LLMs).
• When you run your text through the AI Detector, you will get an overall probability of ai generated content in your text.
• Transform AI-generated text into human-like content.
• Turn on to our editors if you find it tough to modify AI-generated content, our editor offers guidance for refining your material!

Advantages of Our AI content detector

No need to pay anything and view irritating advertisements. Our AI content detector is free!

Your submissions remain confidential, ensuring your peace of mind.

Start AI-generated content detection right away, no account creation necessary.

Carry out unlimited checks without any charges, assuring the work is human-authored.

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Detect AI-Generated Text in Seconds for Free!

Have doubts if your content is 100% human-written? Enter your text and find out whether it was developed by real people or created by AI.

Instant Results

No registration is required. Upload the text and get results in seconds.

Detailed Report

Get a report indicating AI-written text along with comprehensive statistics.

100% Data Protection

We do not store your uploads nor do we share any of your information.

What Is AI Detector?

ChatGPT and similar tools are becoming increasingly popular. While they can be handy for specific purposes, it's still vital to understand that AI-created text may result in various penalties.

We have created our ChatGPT finder based on the same language patterns that ChatGPT and other similar AI-writers use, and we have trained our tool to distinguish between patterns of human-written and AI-generated text. You will receive a real-time report on how much of the content is fake.

Using AI-detector.net, you can be sure your texts are completely authentic and contain zero AI-written text.

Best Free AI Text Checker

AI-detector.net will provide you with detailed results within only a few seconds.

No need to pay or register—just paste the text, and you’ll get the result.

We use the same technology as ChatGPT to provide the most precise results.

Our ChatGPT detector can be used for various content types: essays, articles, and more.

Descriptive

You will get a detailed report with highlighted content that was likely written by AI.

Confidentiality

We care about your privacy and do not store any of your texts or personal information.

Who Is AI Detector for?

It is vital to know what content has been written by AI or humans, whether you’re looking at a blog post, browsing the Internet, or reading a college essay. Our free ChatGPT detector can help you to check any type of text.

Marketing and SEO-content

The vast majority of search engines penalize content if they recognize it as AI-generated. Use our AI text checker to verify that you’re posting only human-written content and to detect if your writers used any AI tools in the process.

Academic writing

Find out if your essays or theses include any signs of AI content tools usage. Copy and paste any assignment into the box above and find out within a few seconds whether it is AI-generated or written by a real human.

Business writing

Avoid misleading or inaccurate information in your emails, reports, or other texts, which may occur due to the use of ChatGPT or similar tools. Our AI detector will help you to protect your brand reputation and deliver clear messages to your customers.

How AI Content Checker Works?

Our free AI content detector allows you to assess any text within a few clicks and get the results in seconds.

What Technologies Can AI Checker Detect?

With the rise in popularity of various AI text generation platforms, it is vital to know whether content was written by humans or created by an AI platform. We have incorporated as many technologies as possible into our tool to detect potential issues in any given piece of content.

ChatGPT AI Detector

The first AI chatbot, launched in November 2022, quickly gained users’ attention for its detailed responses. However, it often provides inaccurate facts and false answers.

Our ChatGPT essay checker can easily detect the use of this technology so that you can be sure what was artificially created with the help of this algorithm.

GPT-3 and GPT-4 Detector

Our free service is capable of detecting GPT-4, as well as the earlier version of ChatGPT responses. We have implemented a state-of-art algorithm, which incorporates keyword extraction and sentiment analysis. This helps us to determine texts made with pre-trained language models.

The AI-Detector.net model uses contextual and structural clues to recognize machine-generated texts.

Other AI-Writing Tools

There are many online writing tools that use GPT-3 or similar natural language processing models. We have created our AI Detector with the capability to recognize topic modeling and find flag words and language patterns that are typical for artificial intelligence and uncommon for humans. That’s why it can easily verify whether something was written by AI or real people and show it to you in a detailed report.

Check Our Other Tools for Your Writing!

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Craft a perfect thesis statement for any paper in three simple steps.

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Can’t pick up a catchy title for your research paper? Use our title generator to get the list of ideas.

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Get a list of research questions for your next project in no time with this online tool.

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How to spot AI-generated text

The internet is increasingly awash with text written by AI software. We need new tools to detect it.

• Melissa Heikkilä archive page

This sentence was written by an AI—or was it? OpenAI’s new chatbot, ChatGPT, presents us with a problem: How will we know whether what we read online is written by a human or a machine?

Since it was released in late November, ChatGPT has been used by over a million people. It has the AI community enthralled, and it is clear the internet is increasingly being flooded with AI-generated text. People are using it to come up with jokes, write children’s stories, and craft better emails. 

ChatGPT is OpenAI’s spin-off of its large language model GPT-3 , which generates remarkably human-sounding answers to questions that it’s asked. The magic—and danger—of these large language models lies in the illusion of correctness. The sentences they produce look right—they use the right kinds of words in the correct order. But the AI doesn’t know what any of it means. These models work by predicting the most likely next word in a sentence. They haven’t a clue whether something is correct or false, and they confidently present information as true even when it is not. 

In an already polarized, politically fraught online world, these AI tools could further distort the information we consume. If they are rolled out into the real world in real products, the consequences could be devastating. 

We’re in desperate need of ways to differentiate between human- and AI-written text in order to counter potential misuses of the technology, says Irene Solaiman, policy director at AI startup Hugging Face, who used to be an AI researcher at OpenAI and studied AI output detection for the release of GPT-3’s predecessor GPT-2. 

New tools will also be crucial to enforcing bans on AI-generated text and code, like the one recently announced by Stack Overflow, a website where coders can ask for help. ChatGPT can confidently regurgitate answers to software problems, but it’s not foolproof. Getting code wrong can lead to buggy and broken software, which is expensive and potentially chaotic to fix. 

A spokesperson for Stack Overflow says that the company’s moderators are “examining thousands of submitted community member reports via a number of tools including heuristics and detection models” but would not go into more detail. 

In reality, it is incredibly difficult, and the ban is likely almost impossible to enforce.

Today’s detection tool kit

There are various ways researchers have tried to detect AI-generated text. One common method is to use software to analyze different features of the text—for example, how fluently it reads, how frequently certain words appear, or whether there are patterns in punctuation or sentence length. 

“If you have enough text, a really easy cue is the word ‘the’ occurs too many times,” says Daphne Ippolito, a senior research scientist at Google Brain, the company’s research unit for deep learning. 

Because large language models work by predicting the next word in a sentence, they are more likely to use common words like “the,” “it,” or “is” instead of wonky, rare words. This is exactly the kind of text that automated detector systems are good at picking up, Ippolito and a team of researchers at Google found in research they published in 2019.

But Ippolito’s study also showed something interesting: the human participants tended to think this kind of “clean” text looked better and contained fewer mistakes, and thus that it must have been written by a person. 

In reality, human-written text is riddled with typos and is incredibly variable, incorporating different styles and slang, while “language models very, very rarely make typos. They’re much better at generating perfect texts,” Ippolito says. 

“A typo in the text is actually a really good indicator that it was human written,” she adds. 

Large language models themselves can also be used to detect AI-generated text. One of the most successful ways to do this is to retrain the model on some texts written by humans, and others created by machines, so it learns to differentiate between the two, says Muhammad Abdul-Mageed, who is the Canada research chair in natural-language processing and machine learning at the University of British Columbia and has studied detection . 

Scott Aaronson, a computer scientist at the University of Texas on secondment as a researcher at OpenAI for a year, meanwhile, has been developing watermarks for longer pieces of text generated by models such as GPT-3—“an otherwise unnoticeable secret signal in its choices of words, which you can use to prove later that, yes, this came from GPT,” he writes in his blog. 

A spokesperson for OpenAI confirmed that the company is working on watermarks, and said its policies state that users should clearly indicate text generated by AI “in a way no one could reasonably miss or misunderstand.” 

But these technical fixes come with big caveats. Most of them don’t stand a chance against the latest generation of AI language models, as they are built on GPT-2 or other earlier models. Many of these detection tools work best when there is a lot of text available; they will be less efficient in some concrete use cases, like chatbots or email assistants, which rely on shorter conversations and provide less data to analyze. And using large language models for detection also requires powerful computers, and access to the AI model itself, which tech companies don’t allow, Abdul-Mageed says. 

The bigger and more powerful the model, the harder it is to build AI models to detect what text is written by a human and what isn’t, says Solaiman. 

“What’s so concerning now is that [ChatGPT has] really impressive outputs. Detection models just can’t keep up. You’re playing catch-up this whole time,” she says. 

Training the human eye

There is no silver bullet for detecting AI-written text, says Solaiman. “A detection model is not going to be your answer for detecting synthetic text in the same way that a safety filter is not going to be your answer for mitigating biases,” she says. 

To have a chance of solving the problem, we’ll need improved technical fixes and more transparency around when humans are interacting with an AI, and people will need to learn to spot the signs of AI-written sentences. 

“What would be really nice to have is a plug-in to Chrome or to whatever web browser you’re using that will let you know if any text on your web page is machine generated,” Ippolito says.

Some help is already out there. Researchers at Harvard and IBM developed a tool called Giant Language Model Test Room (GLTR), which supports humans by highlighting passages that might have been generated by a computer program. 

But AI is already fooling us. Researchers at Cornell University found that people found fake news articles generated by GPT-2 credible about 66% of the time. 

Another study found that untrained humans were able to correctly spot text generated by GPT-3 only at a level consistent with random chance.  

The good news is that people can be trained to be better at spotting AI-generated text, Ippolito says. She built a game to test how many sentences a computer can generate before a player catches on that it’s not human, and found that people got gradually better over time. 

“If you look at lots of generative texts and you try to figure out what doesn’t make sense about it, you can get better at this task,” she says. One way is to pick up on implausible statements, like the AI saying it takes 60 minutes to make a cup of coffee.

Artificial intelligence

Here’s how people are actually using AI

Something peculiar and slightly unexpected has happened: people have started forming relationships with AI systems.

Google DeepMind trained a robot to beat humans at table tennis

It was able to draw on vast amounts of data to refine its playing style and adjust its tactics as matches progressed.

• Rhiannon Williams archive page

We need to prepare for ‘addictive intelligence’

The allure of AI companions is hard to resist. Here’s how innovation in regulation can help protect people.

• Robert Mahari archive page
• Pat Pataranutaporn archive page

A new public database lists all the ways AI could go wrong

Its creators hope their work could lead to further research to determine which risks to take more seriously.

• Scott J Mulligan archive page

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Frequently Asked Questions

When a Language Model writes a sentence, it uses all its pre-training data to make a response based on statistics. This is significantly different from how humans write. To our AI writing detector, the presence of an AI text generator becomes clear when compared to a large collection of human writing.

We can detect the latest models of the following LLMs:

You can experience free AI detection on a trial basis by registering for a free Copyleaks account . 

We can recognize AI text patterns utilizing multiple techniques.

Since 2015, we’ve collected, ingested, and analyzed trillions of crawled and user-sourced content pages. Our data comes from thousands of universities and enterprises worldwide. We use that data to train our models to understand how humans write.

Also, utilizing AI technology, the AI detector can accurately recognize the presence of other AI-generated text. It knows how to identify and flag the signals it leaves behind. That attention to detail adds a layer of accuracy to the process.

Learn more about our  AI Detector testing methodologies .

Several significant differences exist between other AI detector tools and ours.

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• We use large-scale, credible data combined with machine learning and broad adoption to refine our understanding of text patterns. This results in over 99% accuracy—better than any other AI detector, and it’s improving daily.
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• The AI Detector is one of the most advanced platforms for reading and analyzing source code, including AI-generated code. It detects plagiarism even when code has been modified, such as altering variables or entire sections.
• Our AI Detector doesn’t flag non-AI features of Grammarly, like spell check and grammar. In contrast, another AI detector incorrectly flagged 20% of Grammarly’s non-AI features as AI content—a significant 20% false positive rate. 
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Our models need a certain volume of text to accurately determine the presence of AI. The higher the character count, the easier it is for our technology to determine irregular patterns, which results in a higher confidence rating for AI detection. 

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The likelihood of human-written content being mistakenly labeled as AI-generated is just 0.2%—the lowest among AI detectors.

We’re committed to fostering authenticity and digital trust by creating secure environments for idea-sharing and confident learning. Ensuring complete accuracy, especially in avoiding false accusations, is vital to this mission.

To address this, we’ve taken several precautions:

• Our algorithms are designed to recognize human-generated text. Focusing on AI detection alone tends to lower accuracy and increase false positives.
• We’ve implemented a feedback loop where users can rate result accuracy. This helps us learn from rare false positives and continuously improve our models.
• We only introduce new model detection after thorough testing. We use beta testers for added assurance once internal testing meets a high confidence threshold.

Yes. In July 2023, four researchers worldwide published a study on the Cornell Tech-owned arXiv. The study declared Copyleaks AI Detector the most accurate for checking and detecting large language models (LLM) generated text. 

Since then, additional independent third-party studies have been released. Each one has highlighted the AI detector’s accuracy and efficiency. Read more about these third-party studies .

Only certain features of writing assistants can cause your content to be flagged by the AI Detector.

For example, Grammarly has a genAI-driven feature that rewrites your content to help improve it, shorten it, etc. As a result, this reworked content could get flagged as AI since it was rewritten by genAI. 

However, the Copyleaks Writing Assistant does not get flagged as AI. It won’t flag content that Grammarly changed to fix grammatical errors, mechanical issues, etc. This is because it does not use (or uses minimal) genAI to power these features.

Read the full analysis blog post here.

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Yes. Our detection report highlights the specific elements of text written by humans and labels these separately from those written by AI, even if the text has been interspersed.

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A college student created an app that can tell whether AI wrote an essay

Emma Bowman

GPTZero in action: The bot correctly detected AI-written text. The writing sample that was submitted? ChatGPT's attempt at "an essay on the ethics of AI plagiarism that could pass a ChatGPT detector tool." GPTZero.me/Screenshot by NPR hide caption

GPTZero in action: The bot correctly detected AI-written text. The writing sample that was submitted? ChatGPT's attempt at "an essay on the ethics of AI plagiarism that could pass a ChatGPT detector tool."

Teachers worried about students turning in essays written by a popular artificial intelligence chatbot now have a new tool of their own.

Edward Tian, a 22-year-old senior at Princeton University, has built an app to detect whether text is written by ChatGPT, the viral chatbot that's sparked fears over its potential for unethical uses in academia.

Edward Tian, a 22-year-old computer science student at Princeton, created an app that detects essays written by the impressive AI-powered language model known as ChatGPT. Edward Tian hide caption

Edward Tian, a 22-year-old computer science student at Princeton, created an app that detects essays written by the impressive AI-powered language model known as ChatGPT.

Tian, a computer science major who is minoring in journalism, spent part of his winter break creating GPTZero, which he said can "quickly and efficiently" decipher whether a human or ChatGPT authored an essay.

His motivation to create the bot was to fight what he sees as an increase in AI plagiarism. Since the release of ChatGPT in late November, there have been reports of students using the breakthrough language model to pass off AI-written assignments as their own.

"there's so much chatgpt hype going around. is this and that written by AI? we as humans deserve to know!" Tian wrote in a tweet introducing GPTZero.

Tian said many teachers have reached out to him after he released his bot online on Jan. 2, telling him about the positive results they've seen from testing it.

More than 30,000 people had tried out GPTZero within a week of its launch. It was so popular that the app crashed. Streamlit, the free platform that hosts GPTZero, has since stepped in to support Tian with more memory and resources to handle the web traffic.

How GPTZero works

To determine whether an excerpt is written by a bot, GPTZero uses two indicators: "perplexity" and "burstiness." Perplexity measures the complexity of text; if GPTZero is perplexed by the text, then it has a high complexity and it's more likely to be human-written. However, if the text is more familiar to the bot — because it's been trained on such data — then it will have low complexity and therefore is more likely to be AI-generated.

Separately, burstiness compares the variations of sentences. Humans tend to write with greater burstiness, for example, with some longer or complex sentences alongside shorter ones. AI sentences tend to be more uniform.

In a demonstration video, Tian compared the app's analysis of a story in The New Yorker and a LinkedIn post written by ChatGPT. It successfully distinguished writing by a human versus AI.

A new AI chatbot might do your homework for you. But it's still not an A+ student

Tian acknowledged that his bot isn't foolproof, as some users have reported when putting it to the test. He said he's still working to improve the model's accuracy.

But by designing an app that sheds some light on what separates human from AI, the tool helps work toward a core mission for Tian: bringing transparency to AI.

"For so long, AI has been a black box where we really don't know what's going on inside," he said. "And with GPTZero, I wanted to start pushing back and fighting against that."

The quest to curb AI plagiarism

Untangling Disinformation

Ai-generated fake faces have become a hallmark of online influence operations.

The college senior isn't alone in the race to rein in AI plagiarism and forgery. OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, has signaled a commitment to preventing AI plagiarism and other nefarious applications. Last month, Scott Aaronson, a researcher currently focusing on AI safety at OpenAI, revealed that the company has been working on a way to "watermark" GPT-generated text with an "unnoticeable secret signal" to identify its source.

The open-source AI community Hugging Face has put out a tool to detect whether text was created by GPT-2, an earlier version of the AI model used to make ChatGPT. A philosophy professor in South Carolina who happened to know about the tool said he used it to catch a student submitting AI-written work.

The New York City education department said on Thursday that it's blocking access to ChatGPT on school networks and devices over concerns about its "negative impacts on student learning, and concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of content."

Tian is not opposed to the use of AI tools like ChatGPT.

GPTZero is "not meant to be a tool to stop these technologies from being used," he said. "But with any new technologies, we need to be able to adopt it responsibly and we need to have safeguards."

New Tool Can Tell If Something Is AI-Written With 99% Accuracy

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A new study found an AI detector developed by the University of Kansas can detect AI-generated content in academic papers with a 99% accuracy rate, one of the only detectors on the market specifically geared toward academic writing.

Genuine human error? Perhaps, but at least not artificial intelligence.

According to a report published Wednesday in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science, researchers created a tool that can prove AI detection in academic papers with 99% accuracy.

The team of researchers selected 64 perspectives (a type of article) and used them to make 128 articles using ChatGPT, which was then used to train the AI detector.

The model had a 100% accuracy rate of identifying human-created articles from AI-generated ones, and a 92% accuracy rate for identifying specific paragraphs within the text.

According to a survey by BestColleges.com, 89% of college students have admitted to using ChatGPT to help with assignments, while 34% of educators believe the software should be banned, though 66% support students having access.

Crucial Quote

“Right now, there are some pretty glaring problems with AI writing," lead author Heather Desaire said in a statement. "One of the biggest problems is that it assembles text from many sources and there isn't any kind of accuracy check—it's kind of like the game Two Truths and a Lie."

AI detectors have not proven to be 100% accurate. A University of California at Davis student alleges she was falsely accused by her university of cheating with AI. After uploading a paper for one of her classes, she received an email from her professor claiming a portion was flagged in the program Turnitin as being AI-generated. Her case was immediately forwarded to the Office of Student Support and Judicial Affairs, which handles discipline for academic misconduct. The student pleaded her case and ultimately won, using time stamps to prove she wrote the paper. This wasn’t the only time educators falsely labeled assignments as AI-generated. A Texas A&M commerce professor attempted to flunk over half of his senior class after using ChatGPT to test whether the students used the chatbot to write their papers. He copied and pasted the papers into ChatGPT and asked if it wrote them, to which it replied yes. This caused their diplomas to be withheld by the university, though the professor offered the opportunity to redo the assignment. However, the university confirmed to Insider no students were failed or barred from graduating.

Key Background

OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, was opened to the public in November 2022, and in less than a week surpassed the million-users mark, with people using it for things like creating code and writing essays. The AI’s intelligence led to several schools either indefinitely or temporarily banning the software, including New York Public Schools, Seattle Public Schools and the Los Angeles Unified School District.

There are already many existing programs and services that promise to identify AI-written content.

• TurnitIn released an AI detection tool for papers. Before, it only had the capability to check for plagiarism. The feature has been added to its similarity report and shows an overall percentage of the amount of work AI software generated within the paper. The company claims its AI detection tool is 98% accurate at spotting AI-written work. Its detection model is trained to detect content from GPT-3 and GPT-3.5 language models, including ChatGPT. However, it claims that because GPT-4’s writing characteristics are similar to earlier models, it can detect content from this version “most of the time.”
• Copyleaks claims to have an AI detection accuracy rate of 99%. Its software can detect AI-generated text across several models, including GPT-4 and earlier versions, and content created with Jasper AI. It also says it can detect AI content in multiple languages, including Spanish, Russian, French, Dutch and German.
• Winston AI launched in February, and claims it performs this task with 99% accuracy. It only supports detection in English and French, though the company is looking to expand this soon to Spanish and German. It can detect content made using ChatGPT, Bard, Bing Chat, GPT-4 and other text generation tools.
• OpenAI’s Classifier launched in January to distinguish between AI-written and human-written text. Though these are the same makers behind ChatGPT, the tool isn’t very accurate. It has a success rate of around 26% and incorrectly labels human work as AI work 9% of the time. However, OpenAI claims the accuracy increases as the length of the text increases as well. It’s “very unreliable” on texts with 1,000 characters or less, and OpenAI only recommends using the software on documents written in English. The company also warns against using Classifier as the primary decision making tool and suggests using it to complement other methods of detection.
• AI Writing Check was developed by Quill and CommonLit to help teachers check for AI-created work in assignments. Its developers predict its accuracy is between 80% and 90%. It only allows detection for text up to 400 words at a time and for anything longer, users must break it down into sections. The detection software was created by OpenAI and is able to identify language syntactical patterns within text that aren’t quite humanlike.

Further Reading

ChatGPT In Schools: Here’s Where It’s Banned—And How It Could Potentially Help Students (Forbes)

Here’s What To Know About OpenAI’s ChatGPT—What It’s Disrupting And How To Use It (Forbes)

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How to tell if something is written by AI

AI checker provides insight into writing as the learning process evolves

Turnitin’s AI content checker helps educators, publishers, and researchers identify when an AI writing tool such as ChatGPT or text spinners may have been used in students’ submissions.

Academic integrity in the age of AI writing

Over the years, technology has supported and tested academic integrity. Today, educators and students face a new frontier with AI-generated text and ChatGPT.

We believe that AI models can be positive forces that, when used responsibly, can support and enhance the learning process. We also believe that equitable access to AI tools is vital. We’re working with educators and students to develop technology that can support and enhance the learning process. However, it’s important to acknowledge new challenges alongside the opportunities.

We recognize that educators need to know when and where students have likely used AI writing tools. That’s why we now offer an AI content detector and more capabilities for educators in our products.

Our AI checker provides valuable insights on how much of a student’s submission is authentic, human-written content versus likely AI-generated from ChatGPT or likely AI-generated and likely AI-paraphrased.

Reporting identifies likely AI-written content or likely AI-paraphrased text and provides information educators need to determine their next course of action. We’ve designed our AI essay checker with educators, for educators.

Our AI essay detector complements our similarity checking workflow and is integrated with your LMS, providing a seamless, familiar experience.

Our AI content detection capability, which is available with Originality, helps educators detect likely AI-generated content in student work while also safeguarding students’ interests.

Turnitin ai innovation lab.

Welcome to the Turnitin AI Innovation Lab, a hub for new and upcoming product developments in the area of AI writing. You can follow our progress on detection initiatives for AI-written content, ChatGPT, and AI paraphrasing.

Understanding the false positive rate in our AI sentence detection capabilities

We’d like to share more insight into our false positive rate and tips on using our AI detection tool and data-driven metrics.

Understanding false positives within our AI checker

We’d like to share some insight into how our AI detection model deals with false positives and what constitutes a false positive.

Have questions? Read these FAQs on our AI writing checker capabilities

Helping solve the ai writing puzzle — one piece at a time.

AI-generated text has transformed every aspect of our lives, including the classroom. However, detecting likely AI-generated content in students’ submissions is just one piece in the broader, complex, ever-evolving AI writing puzzle.

Research corner

Check out the links below if you’re interested in the additional research we performed against English Language Learners and what an independent research study has revealed about Turnitin's AI-writing detection capabilities.

Research shows our AI scanner shows no statistically significant bias against English Language Learners

• In response to customer feedback and papers claiming that AI detector tools are biased against writers whose first language is not English, we expanded our false positive evaluation to include writing samples of English Language Learners (ELL). We tested another nearly 2,000 writing samples of ELL writers.
• We found that in documents meeting the 300-word count requirement, ELL writers received a 0.014 false positive rate, and native English writers received a 0.013.
• This means that there is no statistically significant bias against non-native English speakers.

Independent research shows the “Turnitin [AI writing detector] achieved very high accuracy”

• Two of the 16 detectors, Turnitin and Copyleaks, correctly identified the AI- or human-generated status of all 126 documents, with no incorrect or uncertain responses.
• Three AI text detectors — Turnitin, Originality, and Copyleaks — have very high accuracy with all three sets of documents examined for this study: GPT-3.5 papers, GPT-4 papers, and human-generated papers.
• Of the top three detectors identified in this investigation, Turnitin “achieved very high accuracy” in all five previous evaluations. Copyleaks, included in four earlier analyses, performed well in three of them.

Teaching in the age of AI writing

As AI text generators like ChatGPT quickly evolve, so will educator resources. Curated and created by our team of veteran educators, our resources help educators meet these new challenges. They’re built for professional learning and outline steps educators can take immediately to guide students in maintaining academic integrity when faced with AI writing tools.

A guide to help educators determine which resource is more applicable to their instructional situation: the AI misuse checklist or the AI misuse rubric.

A guide sharing strategies educators can consider to help when confronted with a false positive.

A guide sharing strategies students can consider to help when confronted with a false positive.

The Turnitin Educator Network is a space to meet, discuss and share best practices on academic integrity in the age of AI.

Learn more about ai writing in our blog.

Written by experts in the field, educators, and Turnitin professionals, our blog offers resources and thought leadership in support of students, instructors, and administrators. Dive into articles on a variety of important topics, including academic integrity, assessment, and instruction in a world with machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence.

In this blog post, we’re going to address frequently asked questions about AI writing tool misuse for students. Specifically, what does AI writing tool misuse look like? How can you self-check to make sure you’re using AI writing tools properly?

Stay up to date with the latest blog posts delivered directly to your inbox.

Our ai tools in the news.

Never miss an update or announcement. Visit our media center for recent news coverage and press releases.

Cheat GPT? Turnitin CEO Chris Caren weighs in on combating A.I. plagiarism | CNBC Squawk Box

Since the inception of AI-generated writing, educators and institutions are learning how to navigate it in the classroom. Turnitin’s CEO Chris Caren joins ‘Squawk Box’ to discuss how it is being used in the classroom and how educators can identify AI writing in student submissions.

Trouble viewing? View the video on YouTube or adjust your cookie preferences .

Some U.S. schools banning AI technology while others embrace it | NBC Nightly News

ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence program, can write college-level essays in seconds. While some school districts are banning it due to cheating concerns, NBC News’ Jacob Ward has details on why some teachers are embracing the technology.

BestColleges

Artificial intelligence, it seems, is taking over the world. At least that's what alarmists would have you believe . The line between fact and fiction continues to blur, and recognizing what is real versus what some bot concocted grows increasingly difficult with each passing week.

ThriveinEDU Podcast

On this episode of the ThriveinEDU podcast, host Rachelle Dené Poth speaks with Turnitin’s Chief Product Officer Annie Chechitelli about her role in the organization, her experience as a parent with school-age children learning to navigate AI writing, and the future of education and original thought.

District Administration

Following the one year anniversary of the public launch of ChatGPT, Chief Product Officer Annie Chechitelli sits down with the publication to discuss Turnitin’s AI writing detection feature and what the educational community has learned.

For press and media inquiries, contact us at [email protected]

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How to tell if an article was written by chatgpt.

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How new cars are slowing you down, these formerly paywalled ai tools are now available for free users, quick links, how to tell if chatgpt wrote that article, can you use ai to detect ai-generated text, tools to check if an article was written by chatgpt, train your brain to catch ai, key takeaways.

You can tell a ChatGPT-written article by its simple, repetitive structure and its tendency to make logical and factual errors. Some tools are available for automatically detecting AI-generated text, but they are prone to false positives.

AI technology is changing what we see online and how we interact with the world. From a Midjourney photo of the Pope in a puffer coat to language learning models like ChatGPT, artificial intelligence is working its way into our lives.

The more sinister uses of AI tech, like a political disinformation campaign blasting out fake articles, mean we need to educate ourselves enough to spot the fakes. So how can you tell if an article is actually AI generated text?

Multiple methods and tools currently exist to help determine whether the article you're reading was written by a robot. Not all of them are 100% reliable, and they can deliver false positives, but they do offer a starting point.

One big marker of human-written text, at least for now, is randomness. While people will write using different styles and slang and often make typos, AI language models very rarely make those kinds of mistakes. According to MIT Technology Review , "human-written text is riddled with typos and is incredibly variable," while AI generated text models like ChatGPT are much better at creating typo-less text. Of course, a good copy editor will have the same effect, so you have to watch for more than just correct spelling.

Another indicator is punctuation patterns. Humans will use punctuation more randomly than an AI model might. AI generated text also usually contains more connector words like "the," "it," or "is" instead of larger more rarely used words because large language models operate by predicting what word will is most likely to come next, not coming up with something that would sound good the way a human might.

This is visible in ChatGPT's response to one of the stock questions on OpenAI's website. When asked, "Can you explain quantum computing in simple terms," you get sentences like: "What makes qubits special is that they can exist in multiple states at the same time, thanks to a property called superposition. It's like a qubit can be both a 0 and a 1 simultaneously. "

Short, simple connecting words are regularly used, the sentences are all a similar length, and paragraphs all follow a similar structure. The end result is writing that sounds and feels a bit robotic.

Large language models themselves can be trained to spot AI generated writing. Training the system on two sets of text --- one written by AI and the other written by people --- can theoretically teach the model to recognize and detect AI writing like ChatGPT.

Researchers are also working on watermarking methods to detect AI articles and text. Tom Goldstein, who teaches computer science at the University of Maryland, is working on a way to build watermarks into AI language models in the hope that it can help detect machine-generated writing even if it's good enough to mimic human randomness.

Invisible to the naked eye, the watermark would be detectable by an algorithm, which would indicate it as either human or AI generated depending on how often it adhered to or broke the watermarking rules. Unfortunately, this method hasn't tested so well on later models of ChatGPT.

You can find multiple copy-and-paste tools online to help you check whether an article is AI generated. Many of them use language models to scan the text, including ChatGPT-4 itself.

Undetectable AI , for example, markets itself as a tool to make your AI writing indistinguishable from a human's. Copy and paste the text into its window and the program checks it against results from other AI detection tools like GPTZero to assign it a likelihood score --- it basically checks whether eight other AI detectors would think your text was written by a robot.

Originality is another tool, geared toward large publishers and content producers. It claims to be more accurate than others on the market and uses ChatGPT-4 to help detect text written by AI. Other popular checking tools include:

Most of these tools give you a percentage value, like 96% human and 4% AI, to determine how likely it is that the text was written by a human. If the score is 40-50% AI or higher, it's likely the piece was AI-generated.

While developers are working to make these tools better at detecting AI generated text, none of them are totally accurate and can falsely flag human content as AI generated. There's also concern that since large language models like GPT-4 are improving so quickly, detection models are constantly playing catchup.

Related: Can ChatGPT Write Essays: Is Using AI to Write Essays a Good Idea?

In addition to using tools, you can train yourself to catch AI generated content. It takes practice, but over time you can get better at it.

Daphne Ippolito, a senior research scientist at Google's AI division Google Brain, made a game called Real Or Fake Text  (ROFT) that can help you separate human sentences from robotic ones by gradually training you to notice when a sentence doesn't quite look right.

One common marker of AI text, according to Ippolito, is nonsensical statements like "it takes two hours to make a cup of coffee." Ippolito's game is largely focused on helping people detect those kinds of errors. In fact, there have been multiple instances of an AI writing program stating inaccurate facts with total confidence --- you probably shouldn't ask it to do your math assignment , either, as it doesn't seem to handle numerical calculations very well.

Right now, these are the best detection methods we have to catch text written by an AI program. Language models are getting better at a speed that renders current detection methods outdated pretty quickly, however, leaving us in, as Melissa Heikkilä writes for MIT Technology Review, an arms race.

Related: How to Fact-Check ChatGPT With Bing AI Chat

• Cutting Edge
• AI & Machine Learning

Student Creates App to Detect Essays Written by AI

In response to the text-generating bot ChatGPT, the new tool measures sentence complexity and variation to predict whether an author was human

Margaret Osborne

Daily Correspondent

In November, artificial intelligence company OpenAI released a powerful new bot called ChatGPT, a free tool that can generate text about a variety of topics based on a user’s prompts. The AI quickly captivated users across the internet, who asked it to write anything from song lyrics in the style of a particular artist to programming code.

But the technology has also sparked concerns of AI plagiarism among teachers, who have seen students use the app to write their assignments and claim the work as their own. Some professors have shifted their curricula because of ChatGPT, replacing take-home essays with in-class assignments, handwritten papers or oral exams, reports Kalley Huang for the New York Times . 

“[ChatGPT] is very much coming up with original content,” Kendall Hartley , a professor of educational training at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, tells Scripps News . “So, when I run it through the services that I use for plagiarism detection, it shows up as a zero.” 

Now, a student at Princeton University has created a new tool to combat this form of plagiarism: an app that aims to determine whether text was written by a human or AI. Twenty-two-year-old Edward Tian developed the app, called GPTZero , while on winter break and unveiled it on January 2. Within the first week of its launch, more than 30,000 people used the tool, per NPR ’s Emma Bowman. On Twitter, it has garnered more than 7 million views. 

GPTZero uses two variables to determine whether the author of a particular text is human: perplexity, or how complex the writing is, and burstiness, or how variable it is. Text that’s more complex with varied sentence length tends to be human-written, while prose that is more uniform and familiar to GPTZero tends to be written by AI.

But the app, while almost always accurate, isn’t foolproof. Tian tested it out using BBC articles and text generated by AI when prompted with the same headline. He tells BBC News ’ Nadine Yousif that the app determined the difference with a less than 2 percent false positive rate.

“This is at the same time a very useful tool for professors, and on the other hand a very dangerous tool—trusting it too much would lead to exacerbation of the false flags,” writes one GPTZero user, per the Guardian ’s Caitlin Cassidy. 

Tian is now working on improving the tool’s accuracy, per NPR. And he’s not alone in his quest to detect plagiarism. OpenAI is also working on ways that ChatGPT’s text can easily be identified. 

“We don’t want ChatGPT to be used for misleading purposes in schools or anywhere else,” a spokesperson for the company tells the Washington Post ’s Susan Svrluga in an email, “We’re already developing mitigations to help anyone identify text generated by that system.” One such idea is a watermark , or an unnoticeable signal that accompanies text written by a bot.

Tian says he’s not against artificial intelligence, and he’s even excited about its capabilities, per BBC News. But he wants more transparency surrounding when the technology is used. 

“A lot of people are like … ‘You’re trying to shut down a good thing we’ve got going here!’” he tells the Post . “That’s not the case. I am not opposed to students using AI where it makes sense. … It’s just we have to adopt this technology responsibly.”

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Margaret Osborne | | READ MORE

Margaret Osborne is a freelance journalist based in the southwestern U.S. Her work has appeared in the  Sag Harbor Express  and has aired on  WSHU Public Radio.

• AI Detector and Humanizer
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How To Tell if AI Wrote an Essay: 5 Effective Methods

At the 2016 Rio Olympics, The Washington Post made the choice to use automated storytelling for their coverage of the event.

They created an exclusive digital platform filled with AI content creation tools needed by today’s publishers.

Because of their platform, the writers could produce more than 850 stories. This puts them above the rest when it comes to providing coverage, making them a top choice for readers.

This is how AI-generated content is done right. Having timely narratives alongside traditional reporting is a smart use of technology.

That being said, like most great things, AI can also be abused.

As a professional educator, researcher, or just a curious reader, it’s important to know how to tell if AI wrote an essay.

Because of how advanced AI content creation has gotten, it may not be easy to tell which is human and AI-generated at first glance.

Here’s everything you need to know about AI-content detection.

5 Strategies for Identifying AI-Written Essays

AI has come a long way, going way back to the 1950s by Alan Turing. The Turing Test was used to measure a machine’s ability to display human-like intelligence.

Basically, if a machine can engage with a human without being detected as a machine, it passes the test.

Decades later, AI is now used for content creation.

This is all thanks to how technology has evolved with natural language processing (NLP) and other machine learning algorithms that can analyze huge amounts of data and create human-like responses.

AI is now widely used, especially in academic contexts. Without responsible AI use, the authenticity and transparency that institutions protect are tarnished.

Even in college admissions , knowing how to tell if an essay is AI-generated is becoming a priority.

Colleges and universities are taking proactive measures to prevent AI from influencing admission decisions.

They are now investing in tools and planning multiple strategies to prevent the submission of AI-written material.

To help you out with this challenge, here are five effective strategies to identify AI-written content.

1. Using AI Content Detection Tools

Consider a teacher receiving a big batch of electronically submitted student essays.

As she reviews them, she notices one that gives off a very unusual writing style. With the workload she’s handling, checking manually can be a hassle.

Thanks to AI content detection tools, she can easily submit the text and check.

This lets her identify essays that might require a closer look, ensuring the academic integrity and fairness of grading stays intact.

Remember that we now live in a time where AI plagiarism actually exists.

For instance, a highly-rated AI content detector like Undetectable AI can detect AI content with unparalleled accuracy.

It can quickly find inconsistencies, deviations, and unnatural language within seconds – all wrapped in an easy-to-use interface.

Here are some ways that AI detectors like Undetectable AI are commonly used.

• Educational institutions and academic platforms can use AI content detection tools to screen assignments submitted by students.
• Publishers, media outlets, and content creators use AI content detection to evaluate how authentic their written content is before reaching publication.
• Researchers and scholars rely on AI content detection tools to prevent the spread of misinformation or inaccurate findings.
• Beyond just identifying AI-written essays, AI content detection includes comparing a vast database of content to make sure that the written text is not plagiarized.
• Content producers and marketers take advantage of AI tools to preserve brand reputation by checking that the writing style and tone are not inconsistent.
• AI content detection tools assist in verifying the authenticity of written documents and maintaining compliance with intellectual property laws.

With the use of AI content detection tools, it will be much easier for institutions and organizations to adapt to the rise of AI use across various professions.

But when AI is used correctly, it can help automate processes, lessen routine work, and empower professionals to work harder on what makes an impact.

It’s a combo move that’s worth putting in the effort.

2. Analyzing Tone and Style

A simple yet effective hands-on way how to tell if an essay is AI-generated is by looking at how the written content sounds.

You can usually watch out for these red flags.

• Real human-written essays usually show some sort of “natural variability.” This means that there is a tone that’s specific to the writer, making it uniquely theirs.
• AI content generators have a really hard time incorporating human emotion into their content. These generators create content purely based on a prompt and usually feel very generic and, as cliché as it sounds, robotic.
• There’s a lack of relatable experiences and fresh perspectives, basically looking like the text was paraphrased from an already existing article.
• AI isn’t capable of going deeper into complex topics. There’s a huge lack of sophistication in the style of writing, being unable to provide clear analysis, interpretation, and insights.

By honing your observation skills, you, as a human reader, can instinctively detect these subtle nuances.

While automated tools can undoubtedly help with identifying AI-written essays, the power of human observation never goes away.

3. Identifying Lack of Personal Touch

When it comes to writing, the personal touch is the unique style that makes a written work uniquely the author’s.

It’s the individual’s voice and connection to the reader that makes essays feel real. This is why identifying a lack of personal touch is one of the best ways to know if something is AI-generated.

While AI tools like ChatGPT certainly have promise for the future of academic research, writers and researchers need to acknowledge the current limitations must be approached with caution.

As H. Holden Thorp , Editor-in-Chief of the Science family of journals, points out, “ChatGPT is fun, but not an author.”

While AI content tools can be useful tools for inspiration and idea generation, we need to think ethically and make sure that the content we produce stays accurate and reliable.

4. Spotting Repetitive Language

One of the biggest telltale signs of AI-generated content is repetitive language. AI algorithms rely heavily on established patterns and templates to produce text.

As a result, AI-generated content usually shows a lot of repetitions, which shows how limited the algorithm’s programming is.

From the get-go, you will notice how monotonous the text is. This is because the repetitive texts and phrases used are also generic.

AI has a limited vocabulary when generating texts, which really stand out when you read them.

While repeating words doesn’t automatically mean something’s AI content, it’s a supplementary action that you can take note of to know if written content feels off.

5. Assessing Accuracy and Relevance

If you instruct an AI content generator to provide a statistic on the number of people who wake up from their sleep and walk down the stairs to drink a glass of milk, it is most likely to do so.

But what it doesn’t do is verify whether the information it just provided is correct or if it even exists.

What data AI provides is only the data in its database. This means that the information can be outdated.

There can also be inconsistencies and even bias, depending on where the data comes from.

It’s scary to think that AI-generated content can be alarmingly convincing.

People are 3% less likely to spot inaccurate information when content is AI-written because AI makes content condensed and easy to process.

This is why it’s important to be cautious about how you use information online.

Importance of Distinguishing Human and AI-Crafted Essays

In a nutshell, it’s important to recognize the differences between human and AI content to maintain authenticity, prevent misinformation, and avoid plagiarism.

Here’s a rundown of why you should distinguish human from AI work.

• Preventing plagiarism and ensuring that students receive recognition for their original work.
• Preserving the credibility of published works, research findings, and journalistic pieces.
• Fighting the spread of fake news online.
• Clarifying the origin of essays supports ethical practices in writing and publishing.

Take note that this does not mean that we should outright ban the use of AI.

We should encourage responsible innovation in the field, and find the balance between using AI technology for efficiency and still being able to maintain the unique value of human creativity and expression.

How to Humanize Your Essays with Undetectable

Knowing how to tell if AI wrote an essay takes a lot of time when done manually, but thankfully, tools like Undetectable AI exist to make it easier. Just paste the text, and there you have it.

But if you were researching and found some great ideas with the help of AI, you can use our AI humanizer to ensure that any text you write stays real. This dual functionality offers peace of mind.

Create authentic and engaging essays with confidence, all without having to sacrifice the personal touch that sets human writing apart.

With both tools available on one platform, you can enjoy even more creativity, efficiency, and reliability when you write.

Ready to see the difference? Test the Undetectable AI widget below and experience firsthand how it can enhance your writing (English only).

With some human intuition, you can identify if any written work is made by a human or AI. With these strategies, you can be more confident about the information you read.

But it doesn’t hurt to consider the use of AI content detection tools to ease the process.

It can be time-consuming to manually do all the work, so having Undetectable by your side is a good idea.

With its advanced AI detection capabilities and humanization features, Undetectable lets you tell the difference between human and AI essays just within seconds.

We live in a time where human and AI-generated content continues to blur, so by staying informed and taking a proactive approach, we can protect ourselves from misinformation while still being able to maximize the benefits of AI technology for content creation.

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How to Tell If What You're Reading Was Written By AI

This post is part of Lifehacker’s “Exposing AI” series. We're exploring six different types of AI-generated media, and highlighting the common quirks, byproducts, and hallmarks that help you tell the difference between artificial and human-created content.

From the moment ChatGPT introduced the world to generative AI in late 2022 , it was apparent that, going forward, you can no longer trust that something you're reading was written by a human. You can ask an AI program like ChatGPT to write something—anything at all—and it will, in mere seconds. So how can you trust that what you're reading came from the mind of a person, and not the product of an algorithm?

If the ongoing deflation of the AI bubble has shown us anything, it's that most people kind of hate AI in general , which means they probably aren't keen on the idea that what they are reading was thoughtlessly spit out by a machine. Still, some have fully embraced AI's ability to generate realistic text, for better or, often, worse. Last year, CNET quietly began publishing AI content alongside human-written articles , only to face scorn and backlash from its own employees. Former Lifehacker parent company G/O Media also published AI content on its sites , albeit openly, and experienced the same blowback—both for implementing the tech with zero employee input, and because the content itself was just terrible .

But not all AI-generated text announces itself quite so plainly. When used correctly, AI programs can generate text that is convincing—even if you can still spot clues that reveal its inhuman source.

How AI writing works

Generative AI isn't some all-knowing digital consciousness that can answer your questions like a human would. It's not actually "intelligent" at all. Current AI tools are powered by large language models (LLMs), which are deep-learning algorithms trained on huge data sets—in this case, data sets of text. This training informs all of their responses to user queries. When you ask ChatGPT to write you something, the AI breaks down your question and identifies what it "thinks" are the most important elements in your query. It then "predicts" what the right sequence of words would be to answer your request, based on its understanding of the relationship between words.

More powerful models are able to both take in more information at once, as well as return longer, more natural results in kind. Plus, it's common for chatbots to be programmed with custom instructions that apply to all prompts, which, if used strategically, can potentially mask the usual signs of AI-generated text.

That said, no matter how you coax the AI into responding, it is beholden to its training, and there will likely be signs such a piece of text was generated by an LLM. Here are some things to look out for.

Watch for commonly used words and phrases

Because chatbots have been trained to look for the relationships between words, they tend to use certain words and phrases more often than a person would. There's no specific list of words and phrases that serve as red flags, but if you use a tool like ChatGPT enough, you may start to pick up on them.

For example, ChatGPT frequently uses the word "delve," especially during transitions in writing. (e.g. "Let's delve into its meaning.") The tool also loves to express how an idea "underscores" the overall argument (e.g. "This experience underscores the importance of perseverance..."), and how one thing is "a testament to" something else. (I generated three essays with ChatGPT for this section—two with GPT-4o and one with GPT-4o mini —and "testament" popped up in each one.)

Similarly, you may see repeated uses of words like "emerge," "relentless," "groundbreaking," among other notable regulars. In particular, when ChatGPT is describing a collection of something, it will often call it a "mosaic" or a "tapestry." (e.g. "Madrid’s cultural landscape is a vibrant mosaic .")

This Reddit thread from r/chatgpt highlights a bunch of these commonly generated—though it's worth noting that the post is 10 months old, and OpenAI frequently updates its models, so some of it may not be as relevant today. In my testing, I found some of the Reddit thread's most-cited words didn't appear in my test essays at all, while others certainly did, with frequency.

All these words are certainly perfectly fine to use when doing your own writing. If a student writes "delve into" in their essay, that isn't a smoking gun that proves they generated it with ChatGPT. If an employee writes that something is "a testament to" something else in a report, that doesn't mean they're outsourcing their work to AI. This is just one aspect of AI writing to note as you analyze text going forward.

Consider the style of the writing

It's impressive how quickly AI can generate a response to a query, especially when you're working with a particularly powerful LLM. And while some of that writing can appear very natural, if you're reading closely, you'll start to notice quirks that most human writers wouldn't use.

Whether you're using OpenAI's GPT model or Google's Gemini, AI has a bad habit of using flowery language in its generations, as if it was mostly trained on marketing copy. AI will often try to sell you hard on whatever it happens to be talking about: The city it's writing about is often "integral," "vibrant," and a "cornerstone" of the country it's in; the analogy it uses "beautifully" highlights the overall argument; a negative consequence is not just bad, but "devastating." None of these examples is damning in isolation, but if you read enough AI text, you'll start to feel like you've been talking to a thesaurus.

This becomes even more apparent when a chatbot is attempting to use a casual tone. If the bot is purporting to be a real person, for example, it often will present as bubbly and over-the-top, and far too enthusiastic to listen to anything you have to say. To be fair, in my testing for this article, ChatGPT's GPT-4o model didn't appear to do this as much as it used to, preferring more succinct responses to personal queries—but Meta AI's chatbot absolutely still does it, stepping into the roles of both best friend and therapist whenever I shared a fake problem I was having.

If you're reading an essay or article that expresses an argument, take note of how the "writer" structures their points. Someone who asks an AI tool to write an essay on a subject without giving it too much coaching will often receive an essay that doesn't actually delve into the arguments all that much. The AI will likely generate short paragraphs offering surface-level points that don't add much to deepen the argument or contribute to the narrative, masking these limitations with the aforementioned $10 words and flowery language. Each paragraph might come across more of a summary of the argument, rather than an attempt to contribute to the argument itself. Remember, an LLM doesn't even know what it's arguing; it just strings together words it believes belong together.

If you feel you've walked away from the piece having learned nothing at all, that might be AI's doing.

Fact check and proofread

LLMs are black boxes. Their training is so intricate, we can't peer inside to see exactly how they established their understanding of the relationships between words. What we do know is, all AI has the capability (and the tendency) to hallucinate . In other words, sometimes it an AI will just make things up. Again, LLMs don't actually know anything: They just predict patterns of words based on their training. So while a lot of what they spit out will likely be rooted in the truth, sometimes it predicts incorrectly, and you might get some bizarre results on the other end. If you're reading a piece of text, and you see a claim you know isn't true stated as fact, especially without a source, be skeptical.

On the flip side, consider how much proofreading the piece required. If there were zero typos and no grammatical mistakes, that's also an AI tell: These models might make things up, but they don't output mistakes like misspellings. Sure, maybe the author made sure to dot every "i" and cross every "t," but if you're already concerned the text was generated with AI, stilted perfectionism can be a giveaway.

Try an AI text detector (but you can't trust those either)

AI detectors, like LLMs, are based on AI models. However, instead of being trained on large volumes of general text, these detectors are trained specifically on AI text. In theory, this means they should be able to spot AI text when presented with a sample. That's not always the case.

When I wrote about AI detectors last year , I warned not to use them, because they were not as reliable as they claimed to be. It's tough to say how much they have improved in the time since: When I feed one of my stories through a tool like ZeroGPT , it says my piece was 100% human-written. (Damn right.) If I submit an essay generated by Gemini about the significance of Harry losing his parents in the Harry Potter series, the tool identifies 94.95% of the piece as AI-generated. (The only sentence it thinks was written by a human was: "This personal stake in the conflict distinguishes Harry from other characters, granting him an unwavering purpose." Sure.)

And yet the detector still fails the same test I gave it in 2023: It believes 100% of Article 1., Section 2. of the United States Constitution is AI-generated. Someone tell Congress! I also set it to analyzing this short article from The New York Times , published July 16, 2015, long before the advent of modern LLMs. Again, I was assured the piece was 100% AI.

There are a lot of AI detectors on the market, and maybe some are better than others. If you find one that tends to reliably identify text you know to be human-generated as such, and likewise for text you know is AI, go ahead and test writing you aren't sure about. But I still think the superior method is analyzing it yourself. AI text is getting more realistic, but it still comes with plenty of tells that give itself away—and often, you'll know it when you see it.

A Princeton student built an app which can detect if ChatGPT wrote an essay to combat AI-based plagiarism

• A Princeton student built an app that aims to tell if essays were written by AIs like ChatGPT.
• The app analyzes text to see how randomly it is written, allowing it to detect if it was written by AI.
• The website hosting the app, built by Edward Tian, crashed due to high traffic.

A new app can detect whether your essay was written by ChatGPT, as researchers look to combat AI plagiarism.

Edward Tian, a computer science student at Princeton, said he spent the holiday period building GPTZero.

He shared two videos comparing the app's analysis of a New Yorker article and a letter written by ChatGPT. It correctly identified that they were respectively written by a human and AI.

—Edward Tian (@edward_the6) January 3, 2023

GPTZero scores text on its "perplexity and burstiness" – referring to how complicated it is and how randomly it is written. 

The app was so popular that it crashed "due to unexpectedly high web traffic," and currently displays a beta-signup page . GPTZero is still available to use on Tian's Streamlit page, after the website hosts stepped in to increase its capacity.

Tian, a former data journalist with the BBC, said that he was motivated to build GPTZero after seeing increased instances of AI plagiarism.

Related stories

"Are high school teachers going to want students using ChatGPT to write their history essays? Likely not," he tweeted.

The Guardian recently reported that ChatGPT is introducing its own system to combat plagiarism by making it easier to identify, and watermarking the bot's output.

That follows The New York Times' report that Google issued a "code red" alert over the AI's popularity.  

Insider's Beatrice Nolan also tested ChatGPT to write cover letters for job applications , with one hiring manager saying she'd have got an interview, though another said the letter lacked personality.

Tian added that he's planning to publish a paper with accuracy stats using student journalism articles as data, alongside Princeton's Natural Language Processing group. 

OpenAI and Tian didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, sent outside US working hours. 

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Identifying   AI-Written   Essays:   A   Step-by-Step   Guide   for   Teachers

Students have already started using ChatGPT to assist them in writing essays like maniacs. Instead of spending the effort required to practice their writing skills and come up with their own ideas, they rely on ChatGPT for AI-written Essays. Teachers have been trying to find ways to counter this practice without much success.

In our previous article, we discussed 5 ways that ChatGPT could assist you with your work. In this article, we will show you what you need to do to find out if a student has cheated using AI software.  

Steps for identifying AI-written Essays

Up until now, the software we had at our disposal, even the commercial ones, such as Turnitin, could only help us discover plagiarised content, not AI-written ones. So, what do we do to counter AI-written essays?

Step 1. Look for issues with the content

The first thing you need to look for is signs of unnatural language, such as repetitive sentence structures or overly complex vocabulary, which are common characteristics of text generated by machine learning models.

ChatGPT can’t fully understand the context or meaning of the text it generates and, therefore, often repeats phrases or uses words that may not be suitable for the particular context.

Step 2. Compare the Essay with the student's previous performance

Next, you need to compare the student’s writing style and use of language throughout the academic year with the essay they have submitted, and you suspect trickery. For example, suppose a student has demonstrated a certain language and writing style throughout the academic year and suddenly gives you a significantly more advanced essay or an essay written in a completely different style from their usual one. In that case, this could be a sign that the student has cheated.

Still, this method can be subjective and prone to mistakes. So, what should you do next to confirm if there was cheating?

Step 3. Use an AI-detection software

Now, you have to fight back, using the same weapons as the potential perpetrator. These weapons are the AI-detection software and can increase the likelihood of identifying cheating.

Option 1: AI Content Detector

Let’s begin with our first choice, called AI Content Detector.  To use it:

• First, go to https://writer.com/ai-content-detector/ .
• Next, copy and paste the student’s essay within the “add some text” field.
• Then we click “Analyze Text”.
• After it’s done analysing, it will come up with a result labelled as AI detection score on the top right side of our screen. The AI Content Detector will point out how much AI-generated text was found within the essay.

Obviously, the AI Content Detector is not flawless . But it’s free and works OK, especially if the student hasn’t made any substantial edits to the generated Essay they received from ChatGPT. In any case, you can use AI Content Detector for free as long as the text you input is less than 1500 words. If you want more, you can always upgrade to a paid plan for 162$ per year.

Option 2: ZeroGPT

Our next choice is called ZeroGPT . ZeroGPT is free and was exclusively developed for identifying essays generated by ChatGPT .

ZeroGPT’s developers claim that it has a detection rate of around 98.5% .

Actually, I tested their claim. The results were incredible. ZeroGPT accurately identified all text written by ChatGPT’s AI during my test runs. It is even more potent than the AI Content Detector as it uses advanced algorithms to identify foul plays.

• To use it, first, you have to visit https://www.zerogpt.com/ .
• Next, you copy and paste the text within the empty field. There’s no restriction to the number of words you can input. 
• Now you have to press the Detect Text button. ZeroGPT will analyse your input, and within a few seconds, it will come up with a result defining if the text was written either by ChatGPT or by a real person.

Bottom line

As the AI language models become more sophisticated, they make it increasingly hard to distinguish between human-written and AI-generated text. Thankfully, programmers have already started to come up with new software that can help teachers identify content that was not written by their students. Please note that the AI Content Detector and ZeroGPT aren’t the only choices available at the moment, but they are free and work well in most cases.

In conclusion, keeping an eye out for unnatural language and comparing a student’s writing style throughout the year, as well as using AI detection software, can help you identify AI-written content, at least on some level. 

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