how to detect essay written by chatgpt

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?

🔗 References

🔮 gpt checker for essays: 5 key benefits.

People have yet to learn where AI and machine learning are taking us, but it has already caused many problems in the education system. This AI essay detector can resolve some of them, at least as of the moment.

There are 5 key benefits of the above GPT checker for essays and other academic writing projects.

Elon Musk, one of Chat GPT creators, said that it was “scary good” and that humanity is approaching the creation of “dangerously strong AI.”

In an interview , Bill Gates commented on the program: “It gives a glimpse of what is to come. I am impressed with this whole approach and the rate of innovation.” And these words give us goosebumps.

Over the first week of its functioning, the program exceeded 1 million users . Therefore, developers are interested in monetizing it, and launching a paid Beta-version won’t take long.

We prefer not to throw out compliments to the chatbot and instead let you check for yourself . It is a chat with AI. The best way to start is to ask a question. It is free so far (still under research), so you can ask as many questions as you please.

We should care about AI-generated content because, in a decade, it will be an everyday reality. Even more so, it is a hot-button issue now. For now, GPT 3 can’t replace human writers. However, AI essay detection has already become an issue for teachers.

You can try asking ChatGPT to write an essay for you. But we do not recommend pass it off as written by you. Not only because it's unethical (although it is). The fact is that ChatGPT has a number of drawbacks that you need to consider before using it.

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: Oct 25th, 2023

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This page contains a free online GPT checker for essays and other academic writing projects. Being based on the brand-new technology, this AI essay detector is much more effective than traditional plagiarism checkers. With this AI checker, you’ll easily find out if an academic writing piece was written by a human or a chatbot. We provide a comprehensive guide on how to interpret the results of analysis. It is up to you to draw your own conclusions.

How-To Geek

How to tell if an article was written by chatgpt.

While no method is totally effective, you can train yourself to spot telltale markers of AI writing — for now.

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

• What is ChatGPT?
• How to Use Google Gemini

How to detect ChatGPT plagiarism — and why it’s becoming so difficult

Chatbots are hot stuff right now, and ChatGPT is chief among them. But thanks to how powerful and humanlike its responses are, academics, educators, and editors are all dealing with the rising tide of AI-generated plagiarism and cheating. Your old plagiarism detection tools may not be enough to sniff out the real from the fake.

Lots of detection options

Putting them to the test.

In this article, I talk a little about this nightmarish side of AI chatbots, check out a few online plagiarism detection tools, and explore how dire the situation has become.

The latest November 2022 release of startup OpenAI’s ChatGPT basically thrusted chatbot prowess into the limelight. It allowed any regular Joe (or any professional) to generate smart, intelligible essays or articles, and solve text-based mathematic problems. To the unaware or inexperienced reader, the AI-created content can quite easily pass as a legit piece of writing, which is why students love it — and teachers hate it.

A great challenge with AI writing tools is their double-edged sword ability to use natural language and grammar to build unique and almost individualized content even if the content itself was drawn from a database. That means the race to beat AI-based cheating is on. Here are some options I found that are available right now for free.

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GPT-2 Output Detector comes straight from ChatGPT developer OpenAI to demonstrate that it has a bot capable of detecting chatbot text. Output Detector is easy to use — users just have to enter text into a text field and the tool will immediately provide its assessment of how likely it is that the text came from a human or not.

Two more tools that have clean UIs are Writer AI Content Detector and Content at Scale . You can either add a URL to scan the content (writer only) or manually add text. The results are given a percentage score of how likely it is that the content is human-generated.

GPTZero is a home-brewed beta tool hosted on Streamlit and created by Princeton University student Edward Zen. It’s differs from the rest in how the “algiarism” (AI-assisted plagiarism) model presents its results. GPTZero breaks the metrics into perplexity and burstiness. Burstiness measures overall randomness for all sentences in a text, while perplexity measures randomness in a sentence. The tool assigns a number to both metrics — the lower the number, the greater possibility that the text was created by a bot.

Just for fun, I included Giant Language Model Test Room (GLTR), developed by researchers from the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and Harvard Natural Language Processing Group. Like GPTZero, it doesn’t present its final results as a clear “human” or “bot” distinction. GLTR basically uses bots to identify text written by bots, since bots are less likely to select unpredictable words. Therefore, the results are presented as a color-coded histogram, ranking AI-generated text versus human-generated text. The greater the amount of unpredictable text, the more likely the text is from a human.

All these options might make you think we’re in a good spot with AI detection. But to test the actual effectiveness of each of these tools, I wanted to try it out for myself. So I ran a couple of sample paragraphs that I wrote in response to questions that I also posed to, in this case, ChatGPT.

My first question was a simple one: Why is buying a prebuilt PC frowned upon? Here’s how my own answers compared to the response from ChatGPT.

As you can see, most of these apps could tell that my words were genuine, with the first three being the most accurate. But ChatGPT fooled most of these detector apps with its response too. It scored a 99% human on the Writer AI Content Detector app, for starters, and was marked just 36% fake by GPT-based detector. GLTR was the biggest offender, claiming that my own words were equally likely to be written by a human as ChatGPT’s words.

I decided to give it one more shot, though, and this time, the responses were significantly improved. I asked ChatGPT to provide a summary of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology’s research into anti-fogging using gold particles. In this example, the detector apps did a much better job at approving my own response and detecting ChatGPT.

The top three tests really showed their strength in this response. And while GLTR still had a hard time seeing my own writing as human, at least it did a good of catching ChatGPT this time.

It’s obvious from the results of each query that online plagiarism detectors aren’t perfect. For more complex answers or pieces of writing (such as in the case of my second prompt), it’s a bit easier for these apps to detect the AI-based writing, while the simpler responses are much more difficult to deduce. But clearly, it’s not what I’d call dependable. Occasionally, these detector tools will misclassify articles or essays as ChatGPT-generated, which is a problem for teachers or editors wanting to rely on them for catching cheaters.

Developers are constantly fine-tuning accuracy and false positive rates, but they’re also bracing for the arrival of GPT-3, which touts a significantly improved dataset and more complex capabilities than GPT-2 (of which ChatGPT is trained from).

At this point, in order to identify content generated by AIs, editors and educators will need to combine judiciousness and a little bit of human intuition with one (or more) of these AI detectors. And for chatbot users who have or are tempted to use chatbots such as Chatsonic, ChatGPT, Notion, or YouChat to pass of their “work” as legit — please don’t. Repurposing content created by a bot (that sources from fixed sources within its database) is still plagiarism no matter how you look at it.

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In terms of world-changing technologies, ChatGPT has truly made a massive impact on the way people think about writing and coding in the short time that it's been available. Being able to plug in a prompt and get out a stream of almost good enough text is a tempting proposition for many people who aren't confident in their writing skills or are looking to save time. However, this ability has come with a significant downside, particularly in education, where students are tempted to use ChatGPT for their own papers or exams. That prevents them from learning as much as they could, which has given teachers a whole new headache when it comes to detecting AI use.

Teachers and other users are now looking for ways to detect the use of ChatGPT in students' work, and many are turning to tools like GPTZero, a ChatGPT detection tool built by Princeton University student Edward Tian. The software is available to everyone, so if you want to try it out and see the chances that a particular piece of text was written using ChatGPT, here's how you can do that. What is GPTZero?

For those who have seen ChatGPT in action, you know just how amazing this generative AI tool can be. And if you haven’t seen ChatGPT do its thing, prepare to have your mind blown! 

There’s no doubting the power and performance of OpenAI’s famous chatbot, but is ChatGPT actually safe to use? While tech leaders the world over are concerned over the evolutionary development of AI, these global concerns don’t necessarily translate to an individual user experience. With that being said, let’s take a closer look at ChatGPT to help you hone in on your comfort level. Privacy and financial leaks In at least one instance, chat history between users was mixed up. On March 20, 2023, ChatGPT creator OpenAI discovered a problem, and ChatGPT was down for several hours. Around that time, a few ChatGPT users saw the conversation history of other people instead of their own. Possibly more concerning was the news that payment-related information from ChatGPT-Plus subscribers might have leaked as well.

ChatGPT is completely free to use, but that doesn't mean OpenAI isn't also interested in making some money.

ChatGPT Plus is a subscription model that gives you access to a completely different service based on the GPT-4 model, along with faster speeds, more reliability, and first access to new features. Beyond that, it also opens up the ability to use ChatGPT plug-ins, create custom chatbots, use DALL-E 3 image generation, and much more. What is ChatGPT Plus? Like the standard version of ChatGPT, ChatGPT Plus is an AI chatbot, and it offers a highly accurate machine learning assistant that's able to carry out natural language "chats." This is the latest version of the chatbot that's currently available.

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Check if Something Was Written by ChatGPT: AI Detection Guide

Last Updated: April 25, 2024 Fact Checked

How AI Detection Tools Work

Using ai detection tools, signs of chatgpt use.

This article was written by Stan Kats and by wikiHow staff writer, Nicole Levine, MFA . Stan Kats is the COO and Chief Technologist for The STG IT Consulting Group in West Hollywood, California. Stan provides comprehensive technology & cybersecurity solutions to businesses through managed IT services, and for individuals through his consumer service business, Stan's Tech Garage. Stan has over 7 years of cybersecurity experience, holding senior positions in information security at General Motors, AIG, and Aramark over his career. Stan received a BA in International Relations from The University of Southern California. There are 11 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 44,312 times.

With the rising popularity of ChatGPT, Bard, and other AI chatbots, it can be hard to tell whether a piece of writing was created by a human or AI. There are many AI detection tools available, but the truth is, many of these tools can produce both false-positive and false-negative results in essays, articles, cover letters, and other content. Fortunately, there are still reliable ways to tell whether a piece of writing was generated by ChatGPT or written by a human. This wikiHow article will cover the best AI detection tools for teachers, students, and other curious users, and provide helpful tricks for spotting AI-written content by sight.

Things You Should Know

• Tools like OpenAI's Text Classifier, GPTZero, and Copyleaks can check writing for ChatGPT, LLaMA, and other AI language model use.
• ChatGPT often produces writing that looks "perfect" on the surface but contains false information.
• Some signs that ChatGPT did the writing: A lack of descriptive language, words like "firstly" and "secondly," and sentences that look right but don't make sense.

• The detection tool compares a piece of writing to similar content, decides how predictable the text is, and labels the text as either human or AI-generated.
• These tools also look for other indicators, or "signatures" that are associated with AI-generated text, such as word choice and patterns. [1] X Research source

• If an AI detection tool reports that a piece of writing was mostly AI-generated, don't rely on that report alone. It's best to only use AI detection tools if you've already found other signs that the writing was written by ChatGPT. [3] X Research source
• Running a piece of writing through multiple AI detection tools can help you get an idea of how different tools work. It can also help you narrow down false-negatives and false-positives.

• If you're evaluating a piece of writing for potential AI use, try searching the web for a few facts from the text. Try to search for facts that are easy to verify—e.g., dates and specific events.

• For example, if you're evaluating a cover letter for AI use, you might tell ChatGPT, "Write me a cover letter for a junior developer position at Company X. Explain that I graduated from Rutgers with a Computer Science degree, love JavaScript and Ruby, and have been working as a barista for the past year."
• Because ChatGPT is conversational, you can continue providing more context. For example, "add something to the cover letter about not jumping right into the industry after college because of the pandemic."

Expert Q&A

• Cornell researchers determined that humans incorrectly found AI-generated news articles credible more than 60% of the time. [12] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• If you're using a ChatGPT detection tool that identified writing as AI-written, consider that it may be a false positive before approaching the situation with the writer. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• If you suspect ChatGPT wrote something but can't tell for sure, have a conversation with the writer. Don't accuse them of using ChatGPT—instead, ask them more questions about the writing or content to make their knowledge lines up with the content. You may also want to ask them about their writing process to see if they admit to using ChatGPT or other AI writing tools. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.turnitin.com/blog/ai-writing-the-challenge-and-opportunity-in-front-of-education-now
• ↑ https://www.turnitin.com/blog/understanding-false-positives-within-our-ai-writing-detection-capabilities
• ↑ https://help.openai.com/en/collections/5929286-educator-faq
• ↑ https://www.npr.org/2023/01/09/1147549845/gptzero-ai-chatgpt-edward-tian-plagiarism
• ↑ https://app.gptzero.me/app/subscription-plans
• ↑ https://contentatscale.ai/ai-content-detector/
• ↑ https://copyleaks.com/api-pricing
• ↑ https://research.google/pubs/pub51844/
• ↑ https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6783457-what-is-chatgpt
• ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9939079/
• ↑ https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065596/how-to-spot-ai-generated-text/

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Was that essay written by AI? A student made an app that might tell you.

As educators worry about a chatbot that can generate text, a student at princeton created a tool to gauge if writing was produced by a person.

As many educators began to worry about whether students may use the popular artificial intelligence bot ChatGPT to churn out papers devoid of original thought, Edward Tian had an idea.

Tian, a 22-year-old student at Princeton University, decided to build an app to detect whether text has been generated by a machine or written by a person.

“Every human wants to know the truth,” Tian said.

Over a few days in a Toronto coffee shop during winter break, he got to work. On Jan. 2, he launched GPTZero , which analyzes different properties of a text.

Tian, who studies computer science and journalism, said he expected a few dozen people to ever try it. But he woke up the next morning stunned by the response.

By now, it has gotten more than 7 million views, he said, and he has heard from people all over the world — many of them teachers. He has also heard from college admissions officers. Many people have subscribed for updates from Tian as he works to improve the technology; he hopes to create something that will help teachers.

ChatGPT — a conversational language model which launched in November and is free and simple to use — can swiftly produce poems, math equations or essays on topics such as the causes of the Civil War, prompting concern that students will misuse the technology. And because it doesn’t copy an existing text, there is no easy way to be certain whether a human or a bot wrote the answer.

Some school officials — including leaders of public schools in New York City and Los Angeles — have banned access to ChatGPT in classrooms.

New York City blocks use of the ChatGPT bot in its schools

Tian is not the only one trying to craft technology that can distinguish writing created by human thought from that generated by a machine; there are plagiarism-detection companies scrambling to do just that. The organization that launched ChatGPT also is working on ways to signal the text was produced with AI.

But the quick response to Tian’s effort highlighted the breakneck pace at which technology is changing classrooms, teaching, and the ways that people define and understand learning.

The AI is really exciting, he said, but the technology needs some safeguards.

Tian learned about developments in various ways, including AI-detection research at Princeton and during a summer internship at Microsoft . He had already been using CodePilot , which uses artificial intelligence to help find coding solutions.

“A lot of people are like … ‘You’re trying to shut down a good thing we’ve got going here!’ ” he said. “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.”

Teachers are on alert for inevitable cheating after release of ChatGPT

Technology is evolving rapidly, said Eric Wang, vice president of artificial intelligence for Turnitin, a company that uses software to help detect plagiarism.

The company can identify multiple forms of AI-generated text, he wrote in an email. It can detect writing produced by ChatGPT in its labs, and it expects to offer the tool publicly later this year when testing is completed.

“We do expect that as these tools improve, accurately identifying text created by ChatGPT will be possible, even certain,” he said.

And OpenAI, the organization that launched with funding from Elon Musk and others and that produced ChatGPT, is working on ways to mark text created with artificial intelligence. OpenAI’s policy calls on users sharing content to clearly indicate it was generated by AI.

“We don’t want ChatGPT to be used for misleading purposes in schools or anywhere else,” a spokesperson wrote in an email, “so we’re already developing mitigations to help anyone identify text generated by that system. We look forward to working with educators on useful solutions, and other ways to help teachers and students benefit from artificial intelligence.”

What is ChatGPT, the viral social media AI?

Tian’s approach measures a few properties, such as the perplexity, essentially the randomness, of the text and its burstiness, an effort to gauge whether the writing is complex and varied, as human writing can be.

His thesis adviser, Karthik Narasimhan, an assistant professor of computer science at Princeton, said that GPTZero has worked surprisingly well for a model developed quickly and that Tian is working to improve it. He also said the efforts have research potential beyond the practical application of detecting possible plagiarism, as people try to understand what the language models are doing.

Vincent Conitzer, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, said he has heard considerable concern from colleagues about ChatGPT.

But, he said, efforts to identify machine-generated text could create a sort of arms race, spurring repeated adjustments to the technology to avoid detection. And some systems risk false negatives and false positives — maybe a student just has a nondescript writing style that reads similarly to a typical AI-produced text, which tends to be clear but generic. “Are you going to fail somebody?” he asked.

He said the watermark idea from OpenAI could be helpful.

But he said it may also require nonscientific efforts to combat cheating, such as professors refining their essay questions to require more complex thought, or drawing on local and current information that would not be widely available. They could require students to write in the classroom, on paper. They could follow up with questions about the writing, to ensure students have a full understanding, Conitzer said.

It’s possible students could even learn from the machine-generated text, which has some positives such as clarity, Conitzer said.

Tian said it would be sad if, years from now, people mostly relied on AI and writing became far more uniform.

“There’s something implicitly beautiful in human prose,” he said, “that computers can never co-opt.”

How to Detect Text Written by ChatGPT and Other AI Tools

We tested a range of ai-detection services with text written by chatgpt and text written by a human: these are the tools that performed best..

Can you spot ChatGPT -generated text? The immensely popular AI is being used in emails, cover letters, marketing pitches, college essays, coding , and even some news stories. But ChatGPT's output is often so convincingly humanlike, sussing out what's written by a human and what's written by a computer program may be best left to the computers themselves.

Detection tools have proliferated in the wake of ChatGPT and alternative large language models (LLMs). Most are free, albeit with character limits (something that can be bypassed by pasting in chunks of text at a time). An AI detector can serve many purposes, from making sure the text you write doesn't come off as too generic and stilted to uncovering deception from job candidates. 

Educators are at the top of the list of those who could use a reliable way to tell whether something has been written by an AI. And they have indeed been among the early adopters of AI detector software. But just as ChatGPT and its kind can be unreliable, so too can the AI detectors designed to spot them.

In the ChatGPT subreddit, students routinely seek advice about allegations that they've used AI in their work. Such was the case for a high school student falsely accused by their history teacher of using ChatGPT. The teacher would not disclose what tool was used and, according to the student, felt justified in making the claim because the detector had helped them catch other AI-written text from other students who admitted to using ChatGPT. 

It’s a cautionary tale we wanted to tell before we get to this roundup of popular AI detectors and our experience with some of them. Since ChatGPT and the like are trained to imitate how humans speak, separating out what an AI has cribbed from common usage and what is actual text written by people is not an easy task—even for AI. 

There was some talk in the AI community of AI generators including a watermark , or signals within AI-written text that could be detected by software without affecting the text's readability. And though companies developing AI, including OpenAI and Google, told the White House they would implement watermarks , they have not done so yet.

Until the day before that announcement, OpenAI had its own AI Text Classifer but removed it, with the note: "As of July 20, 2023, the AI classifier is no longer available due to its low rate of accuracy. We are working to incorporate feedback and are currently researching more effective provenance techniques for text, and have made a commitment to develop and deploy mechanisms that enable users to understand if audio or visual content is AI-generated."

That said, we tested some of the most-used AI detectors. To try all of the free ones, I ran through text from my own story Is Dall-E the Next Dior? How AI Is Trying to 'Make It Work' in Fashion , as well as text from a ChatGPT-generated prompt: "Please write me an article on how AI is being used in the fashion industry, specifically Stable Diffusion, DALL-E 2, and Midjourney."

GPTZero was crushing the dreams of college students just days into ChatGPT making headlines. It was developed by one of their own, Princeton senior Edward Tsai , who used the knowledge from his comp-sci major and journalism minor to analyze text for “perplexity” (how complex the ideas and language are) and “burstiness” (if there’s a blend of long and short sentences rather than sentences of more uniform length). 

Tsai trained GPTZero on paired human-written and AI-generated text. While it can be used to test a single sentence (as long as it’s 250 characters or more), GPTZero's accuracy increases as it's fed more text. 

GPTZero’s origin and speed to market made it popular among educators. But the program's FAQ cautions against using results to punish students: “While we build more robust models for GPTZero, we recommend that educators take these results as one of many pieces in 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.”

Anyone can try GPTZero for free at GPTZero.me . It lets you check up to 5,000 characters per document via pasting or upload. There are three pricing plans: essential ($10 a month for 150,000 words), premium ($16 a month for 300,000 words), and professional ($23 a month for 500,000 words).  

The Results

Of the AI-written text I fed it, GPTZero said: "We are highly confident this text was AI-generated" My own received, "We are highly confident this text is entirely human."

2. Writer AI Content Detector

Writer makes an AI writing tool, so it was naturally inclined to create the Writer AI Content Detector . The tool is not robust, but it is direct. You paste a URL or up to 1,500 characters into the box on its site and get a large-size percent detection score right next to it. The product is free, and those who have a Writer enterprise plan can contact the company to discuss detection at scale. 

Given about 1,500 characters of the ChatGPT-written piece, Writer AI Content Detector graded it "0% human-generated content" and recommended, "You should edit your text until there’s less detectable AI content." For about 1,1500 characters of my own piece, I got a "100% human-generated" score and a robot-issued "Fantastic!" compliment.

ZeroGPT is a straightforward, free tool for “students, teachers, educators, writers, employees, freelancers, copywriters, and everyone on earth,” which claims an accuracy rate of 98%. There are pro ($8.29 a month for 100,000 characters and some bonus features) and plus ($21.99 a month for 100,000 characters and even more features) accounts as well. It works on a proprietary, undisclosed technology the company calls DeepAnalyse, which it says is trained on trained on text collections from the internet, educational datasets, and its proprietary synthetic AI datasets produced using various language models. 

Users paste up to 15,000 characters into a box on the site and receive one of the following results: the text is human-written, AI/GPT-generated, mostly AI/GPT-generated, most likely AI/GPT-generated, likely AI/GPT-generated, contains mixed signals with some parts AI/GPT-generated, likely human-written but may include AI/GPT-generated parts, most likely human-written but may include AI/GPT-generated parts, and most likely human-written.

ZeroGPT knew what I was up to by submitting the AI-written piece. "Your text is AI/GPT Generated," it said, before giving it a score of 100% AI GPT. For my writing, I was relieved to see this conclusion: "Your text is human written," although it gave me a 1.76% AI-written score for two sentences that I definitely wrote myself.

Humans Are Still the Best AI Detectors

While these AI detectors were indeed able to tell AI-written text from text written by a human, precautions against relying completely on their results still apply. I'm a professional writer; those who are not might not have the same results with their own work. I don't mean to brag—it's just some hope for me to cling to in these times of AI journalists taking jobs from human ones .

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My title is Senior Features Writer, which is a license to write about absolutely anything if I can connect it to technology (I can). I’ve been at PCMag since 2011 and have covered the surveillance state, vaccination cards, ghost guns, voting, ISIS, art, fashion, film, design, gender bias, and more. You might have seen me on TV talking about these topics or heard me on your commute home on the radio or a podcast. Or maybe you’ve just seen my Bernie meme .

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OpenAI's new tool may help you identify text written by ChatGPT

But it can “mislabel both ai-generated and human-written text.”.

OpenAI has released a tool to help you determine whether text was more likely written by a human or AI. However, the ChatGPT maker warns that its equivalent of Blade Runner ’s Voight-Kampff test can also get it wrong.

The tool includes a box where you can paste text that’s at least 1,000 characters long. It will then spit out a verdict, like “The classifier considers the text to be very unlikely AI-generated” or “The classifier considers the text to be possibly AI-generated.”

I tested it by prompting ChatGPT to write an essay about the migratory patterns of birds, which the detection tool then described as “possibly AI-generated.” Meanwhile, it rated several human-written articles as “very unlikely AI-generated.” So although the tool could raise false flags in either direction, my (tiny sample size) test suggests at least a degree of accuracy. Still, OpenAI cautions not to use the tool alone to determine content’s authenticity; it also works best with text of 1,000 words or longer.

The startup has faced pressure from educators after the November release of its ChatGPT tool, which produces AI-written content that can sometimes pass for human writing. The natural-language model can create essays in seconds based on simple text prompts — even passing a graduate business and law exam — while providing students with a tempting new cheating opportunity. As a result, New York public schools banned the bot from their WiFi networks and school devices.

While ChatGPT’s arrival has been a buzzed-about topic of late, even extending into media outlets eager to automate SEO-friendly articles , the bot is big business for OpenAI. The company reportedly secured a $10 billion investment earlier this month from Microsoft, which plans to integrate it into Bing and Office 365. OpenAI allegedly discussed selling shares at a $29 billion valuation late last year, which would make it one of the most valuable US startups.

Although ChatGPT is currently the best publicly available natural language AI model, Google, Baidu and others are working on competitors. Google’s LaMDA is convincing enough that one former researcher threw away his job with the search giant last year by claiming the chatbot is sentient. (The human tendency to project feelings and consciousness onto algorithms is a concept we’ll likely hear much about in the coming years.) Google has only released extremely constricted versions of its chatbot in a beta, presumably out of ethical concerns. With the genie out of the bottle, it will be interesting to see how long that restraint lasts.

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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."

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.

Related stories

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.

"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. 

Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, has a global deal to allow OpenAI to train its models on its media brands' reporting.

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College student made app that exposes AI-written essays

Edward Tian made GPTZero to detect ChatGPT-fueled plagiarism

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ChatGPT’s artificial intelligence generated dialogue has gotten pretty sophisticated — to the point where it can write convincing sounding essays. So Edward Tian, a computer science student at Princeton, built an app called GPTZero that can “quickly and efficiently” label whether an essay was written by a person or ChatGPT.

I spent New Years building GPTZero — an app that can quickly and efficiently detect whether an essay is ChatGPT or human written — Edward Tian (@edward_the6) January 3, 2023

In a series of recent tweets, Tian provided examples of GPTZero in progress; the app determined John McPhee’s New Yorker essay “Frame of Reference” to be written by a person, and a LinkedIn post to be created by a bot. On Twitter, he said he created the app over the holidays, and was motivated by the increasing possibility of AI plagiarism.

here's a quick demo with john mcphee's "frame of reference" pic.twitter.com/WphxfxxFdr — Edward Tian (@edward_the6) January 3, 2023

On Jan. 3, Tian tweeted that GPTZero wasn’t working, likely due to a larger than anticipated amount of web traffic. In a Substack newsletter Tian published today, he said that more than 10,000 people had tested out the publicly available version of GPTZero on Steamlit. (At time of writing, both gptzero.me and the Streamlit version are showing errors, likely due to volume of traffic.) In the newsletter, Tian said he updated the GPTZero model to “significantly reduce the rate of false positives and improve output results.”

GPTZero uses “perplexity” and “burstiness” to determine whether a passage was written by a bot. Perplexity is how random the text is in a sentence, and whether the way a sentence is constructed is unusual or surprising to the app. Burstiness compares these sentences to one another, determining their samey-ness. Human writing has more burstiness — which is to say, we tend to write with more sentence variation.

Concerns about plagiarism have abounded since OpenAI launched ChatGPT on Nov. 30, 2022. More than a million people used it within five days post launch . The AI-powered software can write basic essays and emulate the style of established writers. You can direct ChatGPT to copy Shakespeare’s voice, for example, or write in the style of a New Yorker essayist. There are snags in execution, but results are recognizably in the right style. It’s not hard to get the AI to write a high school English-style essay, and to find the result pretty indistinguishable from an assignment written by a student . That said, there are still limitations to what it can do. It’s easily baffled by riddles , and sometimes just makes up facts . StackOverflow also banned any ChatGPT-generated coding feedback, thanks to the frequency of errors.

In December, OpenAI said it would “watermark” ChatGPT output, in order to combat plagiarism.

In his newsletter , Tian said he’s working on more updates to GPTZero, including “improving the model capabilities, and scaling the app out fully.”

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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.

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College student claims app can detect essays written by chatbot ChatGPT

Princeton senior Edward Tian says GPTZero can root out text composed by the controversial AI bot, but users cite mixed results

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A 22-year-old college student has developed an app which he claims can detect whether text is written by ChatGPT, the explosive chatbot raising fears of plagiarism in academia.

Edward Tian, a senior at Princeton University, developed GPTZero over a summer break. It had 30,000 hits within a week of its launch.

Tian said the motivation was to address the use of artificial intelligence to evade anti-plagiarism software to cheat in exams with quick and credible academic writing.

His initial tweet, which claimed the app could “quickly and efficiently” detect whether an essay had been written by artificial intelligence, went viral with more than 5m views.

I spent New Years building GPTZero — an app that can quickly and efficiently detect whether an essay is ChatGPT or human written — Edward Tian (@edward_the6) January 3, 2023

Streamlit, the free platform that hosts GPTZero, has since supported Tian with hosting and memory capabilities to keep up with web traffic.

To determine whether text was written by artificial intelligence, the app tests a calculation of “perplexity” – which measures the complexity of a text, and “burstiness” – which compares the variation of sentences.

The more familiar the text is to the bot – which is trained on similar data – the likelier it is to be generated by AI.

here's a demo with @nandoodles 's Linkedin post that used ChatGPT to successfully respond to Danish programmer David Hansson's opinions pic.twitter.com/5szgLIQdeN — Edward Tian (@edward_the6) January 3, 2023

Tian told subscribers the newer model used the same principles, but with an improved capacity to detect artificial intelligence in text.

“Through testing the new model on a dataset of BBC news articles and AI generated articles from the same headlines prompts, the improved model has a false positive rate of < 2%,” he said.

“The coming months, I’ll be completely focused on building GPTZero, improving the model capabilities, and scaling the app out fully.”

Toby Walsh, Scientia professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales, wasn’t convinced.

He said unless the app was picked up by a major company, it was unlikely to have an impact on ChatGPT’s capacity to be used for plagiarising.

“It’s always an arms race between tech to identify synthetic text and the apps,” he said. “And it’s quite easy to ask ChatGPT to rewrite in a more personable style … like rephrasing as an 11-year-old.

“This will make it harder, but it won’t stop it.”

Walsh said users could also ask ChatGPT to add more “randomness” into text to evade censors, and obfuscate with different synonyms and grammatical edits.

Meanwhile, he said each app developed to spot synthetic texts gave greater ability for artificial intelligence programs to evade detection.

And each time a user logged on to ChatGPT, it was generating human feedback to improve filters, both implicitly and explicitly.

“There’s a deep fundamental technical reason we’ll never win the arms race,” Walsh said.

“Every program used to identify synthetic text can be added to [the original program] to generate synthetic text to fool them … it’s always the case.

“We are training it but it’s getting better by the day.”

Users of GPTZero have cited mixed results.

GPTZero is a proposed anti-plagiarism tool that claims to be able to detect ChatGPT-generated text. Here's how it did on the first prompt I tried. https://t.co/ZmisoZt0uO pic.twitter.com/RhNU7B4k7B — Riley Goodside (@goodside) January 4, 2023

“It seemed like it was working on - and it does work for texts which are generated by GPT models entirely or generated with semi-human intervention,” one subscriber wrote.

“However … it does not work well with essays written by good writers. It false flagged so many essays as AI-written.

“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.”

“Nice attempt, but ChatGPT is so good at what it does,” another subscriber wrote.

“I have pasted in roughly 350 words of French … mostly generated by ChatGPT. The text is slightly manually edited for a better style, and generated with a strong, enforced context leading to the presence of proper nouns.

“That text passes the GPTZero test as human … I am not totally convinced that proper human-AI cooperation can be flagged.”

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AI Writing Tools Benefits and Advantages

Identify unoriginal content.

AI writing tools are equipped with plagiarism detection features, allowing users to verify the originality of an essay. By using these tools, you can quickly determine if an essay was written by ChatGPT or if it has been plagiarized from other sources. This safeguard ensures the authenticity and integrity of the content.

Additionally, these AI tools for writing provide detailed reports highlighting any instances of duplicate content, enabling users to make necessary revisions and uphold academic honesty. Leveraging such capabilities fosters trust and confidence in the authenticity of the written work, which is crucial for academic and professional pursuits.

Efficient Content Evaluation

Best AI writing tools streamline the process of evaluating an essay's quality and coherence. These tools offer comprehensive analysis, including grammar checks, readability scores, and coherence assessments, empowering writers to identify any discrepancies that may indicate automated content generation. By leveraging these capabilities, users can gauge the likelihood of the essay being written by an AI tool for writing and take corrective action as needed.

Furthermore, the online writing tools assess the essay's overall structure and flow, providing valuable insights into the writing style and coherence. This functionality allows users to ensure that the essay reflects their unique voice and perspective, reinforcing the authorship and originality of the content.

Enhanced Writing Experience

AI tools for writing facilitate an enhanced writing experience by offering advanced editing and refinement features. These tools provide intelligent suggestions for improving sentence structure, vocabulary usage, and overall writing style, enabling writers to enhance the essay's quality and authenticity. By leveraging such capabilities, users can confidently differentiate between human-crafted content and AI-generated text, ensuring the essay's authorship.

Maximizing the Benefits of AI Writing Tools

Utilize plagiarism checkers.

When assessing the authenticity of an essay, it is essential to utilize the best writing tools equipped with robust plagiarism checkers. These tools offer comprehensive scanning capabilities to detect any instances of unoriginal content, ensuring the essay's integrity and originality. By leveraging these features, writers can confidently verify the authenticity of the content and maintain academic integrity.

Furthermore, the benefits of using AI writing tools with plagiarism checkers extend beyond academic pursuits, providing professionals with a reliable means of safeguarding the originality of their written work in various industries.

Incorporate Advanced Editing Functions

To discern between essays written by ChatGPT and human authors, it is recommended to incorporate advanced editing functions offered by AI writing tools. These features provide valuable insights into the writing style, coherence, and overall quality of the content, enabling users to make informed assessments. By leveraging these advanced editing capabilities, writers can confidently differentiate between AI-generated content and human-crafted essays, preserving the authenticity and authorship of their work.

Optimize Writing Style Analysis

Maximizing the benefits of AI writing tools involves optimizing the writing style analysis features to ensure the preservation of the author's unique voice and perspective. These tools offer comprehensive assessments of writing style, enabling users to evaluate the authenticity and originality of the content. By optimizing the writing style analysis, writers can effectively discern essays authored by ChatGPT from human-created content, reinforcing the authorship and individuality of their work.

Utilize Readability Assessments

Integrating readability assessments into the essay evaluation process is paramount for distinguishing AI-generated content from human-written work. AI writing tools provide robust readability analysis, offering insights into the coherence and readability of the content. By leveraging these assessments, writers can ensure that the essay reflects human-level readability and coherence, reinforcing the authenticity and authorship of the written work.

Harness AI-Powered Grammar Checks

Harnessing AI-powered grammar checks offered by advanced writing tools is instrumental in differentiating between AI-generated essays and human-crafted content. These grammar checks provide in-depth analysis of sentence structure, grammar usage, and linguistic nuances, enabling writers to identify any discrepancies indicative of AI-generated content. By utilizing these advanced grammar checks, users can confidently uphold the authenticity and authorship of their written work.

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AI Writing Tools: Practical Examples

Discover practical examples of leveraging AI writing tools to verify the authenticity of an essay and differentiate between AI-generated content and human-crafted writing.

Create a comprehensive evaluation plan for an academic essay using AI writing tools, ensuring the preservation of originality and authenticity.

When evaluating an academic essay using AI writing tools, it is essential to initiate the process by conducting a thorough plagiarism check. By leveraging the robust plagiarism detection features, the tool will scan the essay to identify any instances of unoriginal content or similarities with existing sources. This step ensures the preservation of the essay's originality and authenticity, a crucial aspect of academic integrity.

Following the plagiarism check, it is imperative to incorporate advanced editing functions offered by the AI writing tool. These functions provide comprehensive insights into the essay's writing style, coherence, and overall quality, enabling the evaluator to make informed assessments. By leveraging these advanced editing capabilities, the evaluator can confidently differentiate between AI-generated content and human-crafted essays, reinforcing the authenticity and authorship of the work.

In addition, optimizing the writing style analysis features is paramount for preserving the author's unique voice and perspective. By maximizing the writing style analysis, the evaluator can effectively discern essays authored by AI from human-created content, further reinforcing the authorship and individuality of the work. Furthermore, integrating readability assessments into the evaluation process ensures that the essay reflects human-level readability and coherence, strengthening the authenticity and authorship of the written work.

Lastly, harnessing AI-powered grammar checks provided by the advanced writing tool is instrumental in verifying the authenticity and authorship of the essay. These grammar checks offer in-depth analysis of sentence structure, grammar usage, and linguistic nuances, enabling the evaluator to confidently uphold the integrity of the written work. By implementing these comprehensive evaluation steps, the academic essay can undergo thorough scrutiny, ensuring its originality and authenticity.

Demonstrate the process of validating professional content using AI writing tools to ensure originality and authenticity.

When validating professional content using AI writing tools, the initial step involves conducting a meticulous assessment of the content's originality through comprehensive plagiarism checks. Leveraging the advanced plagiarism detection features, the tool thoroughly scans the content to identify any instances of unoriginal material or similarities with existing sources. This step is integral to ensuring the authenticity and integrity of professional written work.

Subsequently, incorporating advanced editing functions into the validation process provides valuable insights into the content's writing style, coherence, and overall quality. By leveraging these advanced editing capabilities, the validator can confidently differentiate between AI-generated content and human-crafted writing, preserving the originality and authorship of the material.

Furthermore, optimizing the writing style analysis features offered by the AI writing tool is crucial for maintaining the author's unique voice and perspective within the professional content. Maximizing the writing style analysis allows the validator to effectively discern AI-authored content from human-created material, reinforcing the authenticity and individuality of the work. Additionally, integrating readability assessments into the validation process ensures that the content aligns with human-level readability and coherence, solidifying its authenticity and authorship.

Lastly, harnessing AI-powered grammar checks provided by the advanced writing tool is paramount in validating the originality and authenticity of professional content. These grammar checks offer comprehensive analysis of sentence structure, grammar usage, and linguistic nuances, enabling the validator to uphold the integrity of the written work. By implementing these comprehensive validation procedures, professional content undergoes rigorous scrutiny, ensuring its originality and authenticity.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can i check if an essay was written by chatgpt, what are the benefits of using ai writing tools to verify essay authenticity, can online writing tools detect essays generated by chatgpt, how do ai-powered writing tools analyze content for chatgpt's writing style, are there writing tools for authors to verify if content was written by ai models like chatgpt, do ai writing assistance tools offer examples of ai-powered writing to compare with essays, join 1,000,000+ creators and professionals from trusted companies by choosing us, .css-1d7fhal{margin:0;font-family:"roboto","helvetica","arial",sans-serif;font-weight:400;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5;letter-spacing:0.00938em;max-width:700px;}@media (min-width:0px){.css-1d7fhal{font-size:24px;font-weight:600;line-height:32px;font-family:'__inter_6eddd9','__inter_fallback_6eddd9';}}@media (min-width:744px){.css-1d7fhal{font-size:45px;font-weight:600;line-height:52px;font-family:'__inter_6eddd9','__inter_fallback_6eddd9';}} have a task that has no tool our chat knows how to do it.

7 Surefire Signs That ChatGPT Has Written an Essay Revealed

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have revealed the seven telltale signs that a piece of written content was generated by ChatGPT , after carefully analyzing more than 150 essays written by high school students and undergraduates.

They found that ChatGPT loves an Oxford Comma, repeats phrases and spits out tautological statements practically empty of meaning at a much higher frequency than humans.

While the findings are interesting, the sample size is quite small. There’s also no guarantee that the linguistic habits and techniques identified couldn’t and wouldn’t be used by a human. What’s more, AI content detection tools are largely unreliable; there’s still no way to know for certain that any given written content is AI-generated.

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The 7 Telltale Signs Content is AI-Generated

The researchers at Cambridge analyzed 164 essays written by high school students with four essays written with a helping hand from ChatGPT.

The ChatGPT-assisted essays were generally more information-heavy and had more reflective elements, but the markers at Cambridge found that they lacked the level of comparison and analysis typically found in human-generated content. 

According to UK-based publication The Telegraph , which broke the story, the researchers identified seven key indicators of AI content:

• Frequent use of Latin root words and “vocabulary above the expected level”
• Paragraphs starting with singular words like “however”, and then a comma 
• Lots of numbered lists with colons
• Unnecessary clarificatory language (e.g. “true fact”)
• Tautological language (“Lets come together to unite”)
• Repetition of the same word or phrase twice 
• Consistent and frequent use of Oxford commas in sentences

Are There Any Other Ways to Spot ChatGPT Plagiarism?

Yes and no. There are many tools online that claim to be able to detect AI content, but when I tested a wide range of them last year, I found many to be wildly inaccurate.

For instance, OpenAI’s own text classifier – which was eventually shut down because it performed so poorly – was unable to identify that text written by ChatGPT (effectively itself) was AI-generated.

Even Turnitin has been using automated processes to detect plagiarized content in academic work for years, and they’ve also developed a powerful AI content checker. The company has always maintained that verdicts arrived at by their tools should be treated as an indication, not a cast-iron accusation.

“Given that our false positive rate is not zero” Turnitin explains in a blog post discussing its AI content detection capabilities.

“You as the instructor will need to apply your professional judgment, knowledge of your students, and the specific context surrounding the assignment”.

None of these tools are infallible – and worse still, many of the free ones you’ll find lurking at the top of the Google Search results are completely and utterly useless.

Is It Wrong to Use AI for School or College Work?

While asking AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini to write you an essay isn’t quite “plagiarism” in the same way copying content written by other people and passing it off as your own is, it’s certainly not advised.

Whether it’s objectively plagiarism or not is likely irrelevant – the educational institution you’re enrolled in has probably created guidelines explicitly banning generative AI. Many universities have already taken a similar approach to peer review and other academic processes.

Besides, the whole point of writing an essay is to consider the range of ideas and views on the topic you’re writing about and evaluate them using your head. Getting an AI to do it for you defeats the whole point of writing the essay in the first place.

Our advice – considering the consequences of being accused of plagiarism while at university – is to stick to the rules. Who knows – you might learn something while you’re at it!

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Does ChatGPT fabricate citations? Can you use ChatGPT in your Research?

Using AI tools as part of your research papers can bring up many problems. 

Is it actually allowed to use AI?

How do you cite an AI tool like ChatGPT?

Most Universities will probably look down on research written by an AI tool as AI tools work on a prediction-based method where they just predict the next word. While this looks amazing and can be useful in many many situations, it hardly counts as new research (I am talking about generative AI tools like ChatGPT, other types of AI algorithms can do unique research).

The problem with using ChatGPT for your research is that it often can’t correctly source where it got the information from. It also tends to just simply make stuff up.    

Are the Citations in ChatGPT real?

You should be cautious when using the sources that ChatGPT gives you. It can often give you decent sources if you are using ChatGPT Plus (because it is connected to the web). 

Sometimes these sources are real and can be used as citation in your work. Other times ChatGPT may give you links to pages that don’t work or worse don’t exist.

Depending on your University or educational institute, you may be allowed to cite ChatGPT but you will need to get in contact with them as it may be different for each institution. It may also depend on the style guide your institution uses. You can read more about using ChatGPT with MLA and APA style guides here.

How can you get correct references in ChatGPT?

Getting the correct references can be a challenge especially once it has given you the wrong information. 

You can try the following to help you try to get the correct reference:

• Be more specific on the reference you need
• Provide more context for ChatGPT
• Give specific examples of what you want

In my experience, it can be very difficult to get ChatGPT out of the loop of providing incorrect information and source links. I usually will change to Google Gemini or even better Perplexity AI. 

Getting information from a variety of LLMs will also often increase your understanding of a particular topic as they have different training datasets and different capabilities.

Is ChatGPT reliable for Research?

ChatGPT can be reliable for research for surface-level topics and information. I personally wouldn’t recommend it for complex research that requires nuance.  

If you are doing academic research, then I suggest using Perplexity AI. They have a really useful feature that allows you to filter your search to only include academic research papers. 

Can you use AI-generated text in your Research Papers?

I would recommend against using ChatGPT or other AI tools to write your papers for you. It goes against academic integrity and the whole point of education. 

You can of course use AI to research topics, correct your spelling and grammar, translate documents, and rephrase text that doesn’t sound correct. 

If you do want to use AI to write your text, you should invest some time in learning “prompt engineering”. This is the skill of getting the best output from your AI tool.If you know what to ask the AI tool, then it will respond with better information.  

But this next question needs to be answered.👇

Can Universities Catch You Using ChatGPT?

Yes, Universities can catch you using ChatGPT . They can use AI content detectors like Winston AI to detect text that was written by AI.

AI detectors also use AI to detect AI-written text. Winston AI uses a large training dataset where the origin of the text is known (if it was written by a human or an AI tool). It then tests your text against this database along with a language analysis tool to predict whether the text was written by AI or not. 

Let me show you an example:

First, I will ask ChatGPT to write me a research paper

As you can see from the results below, Winston AI correctly predicted the text as AI-generated. 

That’s because we have an accuracy rate of 99.98% when detecting AI content. For that reason, Universities are choosing Winston AI to use as their AI content detection tool. So they can trust that they have an AI detector that works.

Try Winston AI here

The use of AI tools like ChatGPT in academic research isn’t prohibited by law, but it is subject to the policies of individual academic institutions. It’s advisable to consult your university’s guidelines regarding AI use in research.

If your institution allows the citation of AI-generated content, you can cite ChatGPT as a source similarly to other digital tools. Be specific about the version and the date of interaction. For example: “ChatGPT, OpenAI, [version], accessed on [date].”

ChatGPT may reference or generate links that appear credible, but it can also fabricate sources or cite nonexistent materials. Always verify the validity of the sources independently before using them in your academic work.

Always cross-check any information provided by AI tools with reliable sources. If you encounter incorrect information, refining your questions or providing more specific context may help obtain more accurate responses.

While ChatGPT can provide useful information for preliminary research or exploring general topics, it may not be suitable for in-depth or nuanced academic research that requires detailed analysis and originality.

Yes, relying on AI to conduct research or draft papers without proper attribution can breach academic integrity policies. It’s crucial to use AI tools responsibly and in a manner that complies with your educational institution’s guidelines.

Conor Monaghan

Conor is an AI expert and English Teacher. He spends his time researching and writing about AI tools to help educators and publishers to become more productive.

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How to Detect Text Written by ChatGPT and Other AI Tools

We tested a range of ai-detection services with text written by chatgpt and text written by a human: these are the tools that performed best..

Can you spot ChatGPT -generated text? The immensely popular AI is being used in emails, cover letters, marketing pitches, college essays, coding , and even some news stories. But ChatGPT's output is often so convincingly humanlike, sussing out what's written by a human and what's written by a computer program may be best left to the computers themselves.

Detection tools have proliferated in the wake of ChatGPT and alternative large language models (LLMs). Most are free, albeit with character limits (something that can be bypassed by pasting in chunks of text at a time). An AI detector can serve many purposes, from making sure the text you write doesn't come off as too generic and stilted to uncovering deception from job candidates. 

Educators are at the top of the list of those who could use a reliable way to tell whether something has been written by an AI. And they have indeed been among the early adopters of AI detector software. But just as ChatGPT and its kind can be unreliable, so too can the AI detectors designed to spot them.

In the ChatGPT subreddit, students routinely seek advice about allegations that they've used AI in their work. Such was the case for a high school student falsely accused by their history teacher of using ChatGPT. The teacher would not disclose what tool was used and, according to the student, felt justified in making the claim because the detector had helped them catch other AI-written text from other students who admitted to using ChatGPT. 

It’s a cautionary tale we wanted to tell before we get to this roundup of popular AI detectors and our experience with some of them. Since ChatGPT and the like are trained to imitate how humans speak, separating out what an AI has cribbed from common usage and what is actual text written by people is not an easy task—even for AI. 

There was some talk in the AI community of AI generators including a watermark , or signals within AI-written text that could be detected by software without affecting the text's readability. And though companies developing AI, including OpenAI and Google, told the White House they would implement watermarks , they have not done so yet.

Until the day before that announcement, OpenAI had its own AI Text Classifer but removed it, with the note: "As of July 20, 2023, the AI classifier is no longer available due to its low rate of accuracy. We are working to incorporate feedback and are currently researching more effective provenance techniques for text, and have made a commitment to develop and deploy mechanisms that enable users to understand if audio or visual content is AI-generated."

That said, we tested some of the most-used AI detectors. To try all of the free ones, I ran through text from my own story Is Dall-E the Next Dior? How AI Is Trying to 'Make It Work' in Fashion , as well as text from a ChatGPT-generated prompt: "Please write me an article on how AI is being used in the fashion industry, specifically Stable Diffusion, DALL-E 2, and Midjourney."

GPTZero was crushing the dreams of college students just days into ChatGPT making headlines. It was developed by one of their own, Princeton senior Edward Tsai , who used the knowledge from his comp-sci major and journalism minor to analyze text for “perplexity” (how complex the ideas and language are) and “burstiness” (if there’s a blend of long and short sentences rather than sentences of more uniform length). 

Tsai trained GPTZero on paired human-written and AI-generated text. While it can be used to test a single sentence (as long as it’s 250 characters or more), GPTZero's accuracy increases as it's fed more text. 

GPTZero’s origin and speed to market made it popular among educators. But the program's FAQ cautions against using results to punish students: “While we build more robust models for GPTZero, we recommend that educators take these results as one of many pieces in 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.”

Anyone can try GPTZero for free at GPTZero.me . It lets you check up to 5,000 characters per document via pasting or upload. There are three pricing plans: essential ($10 a month for 150,000 words), premium ($16 a month for 300,000 words), and professional ($23 a month for 500,000 words).  

The Results

Of the AI-written text I fed it, GPTZero said: "We are highly confident this text was AI-generated" My own received, "We are highly confident this text is entirely human."

2. Writer AI Content Detector

Writer makes an AI writing tool, so it was naturally inclined to create the Writer AI Content Detector . The tool is not robust, but it is direct. You paste a URL or up to 1,500 characters into the box on its site and get a large-size percent detection score right next to it. The product is free, and those who have a Writer enterprise plan can contact the company to discuss detection at scale. 

Given about 1,500 characters of the ChatGPT-written piece, Writer AI Content Detector graded it "0% human-generated content" and recommended, "You should edit your text until there’s less detectable AI content." For about 1,1500 characters of my own piece, I got a "100% human-generated" score and a robot-issued "Fantastic!" compliment.

ZeroGPT is a straightforward, free tool for “students, teachers, educators, writers, employees, freelancers, copywriters, and everyone on earth,” which claims an accuracy rate of 98%. There are pro ($8.29 a month for 100,000 characters and some bonus features) and plus ($21.99 a month for 100,000 characters and even more features) accounts as well. It works on a proprietary, undisclosed technology the company calls DeepAnalyse, which it says is trained on trained on text collections from the internet, educational datasets, and its proprietary synthetic AI datasets produced using various language models. 

Users paste up to 15,000 characters into a box on the site and receive one of the following results: the text is human-written, AI/GPT-generated, mostly AI/GPT-generated, most likely AI/GPT-generated, likely AI/GPT-generated, contains mixed signals with some parts AI/GPT-generated, likely human-written but may include AI/GPT-generated parts, most likely human-written but may include AI/GPT-generated parts, and most likely human-written.

ZeroGPT knew what I was up to by submitting the AI-written piece. "Your text is AI/GPT Generated," it said, before giving it a score of 100% AI GPT. For my writing, I was relieved to see this conclusion: "Your text is human written," although it gave me a 1.76% AI-written score for two sentences that I definitely wrote myself.

Humans Are Still the Best AI Detectors

While these AI detectors were indeed able to tell AI-written text from text written by a human, precautions against relying completely on their results still apply. I'm a professional writer; those who are not might not have the same results with their own work. I don't mean to brag—it's just some hope for me to cling to in these times of AI journalists taking jobs from human ones .

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About 1 in 5 U.S. teens who’ve heard of ChatGPT have used it for schoolwork

Roughly one-in-five teenagers who have heard of ChatGPT say they have used it to help them do their schoolwork, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17. With a majority of teens having heard of ChatGPT, that amounts to 13% of all U.S. teens who have used the generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot in their schoolwork.

Teens in higher grade levels are particularly likely to have used the chatbot to help them with schoolwork. About one-quarter of 11th and 12th graders who have heard of ChatGPT say they have done this. This share drops to 17% among 9th and 10th graders and 12% among 7th and 8th graders.

There is no significant difference between teen boys and girls who have used ChatGPT in this way.

The introduction of ChatGPT last year has led to much discussion about its role in schools , especially whether schools should integrate the new technology into the classroom or ban it .

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to understand American teens’ use and understanding of ChatGPT in the school setting.

The Center conducted an online survey of 1,453 U.S. teens from Sept. 26 to Oct. 23, 2023, via Ipsos. Ipsos recruited the teens via their parents, who were part of its KnowledgePanel . The KnowledgePanel is a probability-based web panel recruited primarily through national, random sampling of residential addresses. The survey was weighted to be representative of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 who live with their parents by age, gender, race and ethnicity, household income, and other categories.

This research was reviewed and approved by an external institutional review board (IRB), Advarra, an independent committee of experts specializing in helping to protect the rights of research participants.

Here are the  questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and its  methodology .

Teens’ awareness of ChatGPT

Overall, two-thirds of U.S. teens say they have heard of ChatGPT, including 23% who have heard a lot about it. But awareness varies by race and ethnicity, as well as by household income:

• 72% of White teens say they’ve heard at least a little about ChatGPT, compared with 63% of Hispanic teens and 56% of Black teens.
• 75% of teens living in households that make $75,000 or more annually have heard of ChatGPT. Much smaller shares in households with incomes between $30,000 and $74,999 (58%) and less than $30,000 (41%) say the same.

Teens who are more aware of ChatGPT are more likely to use it for schoolwork. Roughly a third of teens who have heard a lot about ChatGPT (36%) have used it for schoolwork, far higher than the 10% among those who have heard a little about it.

When do teens think it’s OK for students to use ChatGPT?

For teens, whether it is – or is not – acceptable for students to use ChatGPT depends on what it is being used for.

There is a fair amount of support for using the chatbot to explore a topic. Roughly seven-in-ten teens who have heard of ChatGPT say it’s acceptable to use when they are researching something new, while 13% say it is not acceptable.

However, there is much less support for using ChatGPT to do the work itself. Just one-in-five teens who have heard of ChatGPT say it’s acceptable to use it to write essays, while 57% say it is not acceptable. And 39% say it’s acceptable to use ChatGPT to solve math problems, while a similar share of teens (36%) say it’s not acceptable.

Some teens are uncertain about whether it’s acceptable to use ChatGPT for these tasks. Between 18% and 24% say they aren’t sure whether these are acceptable use cases for ChatGPT.

Those who have heard a lot about ChatGPT are more likely than those who have only heard a little about it to say it’s acceptable to use the chatbot to research topics, solve math problems and write essays. For instance, 54% of teens who have heard a lot about ChatGPT say it’s acceptable to use it to solve math problems, compared with 32% among those who have heard a little about it.

Note: Here are the  questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and its  methodology .

• Artificial Intelligence
• Technology Adoption
• Teens & Tech

Olivia Sidoti is a research assistant focusing on internet and technology research at Pew Research Center

Jeffrey Gottfried is an associate director focusing on internet and technology research at Pew Research Center

Many Americans think generative AI programs should credit the sources they rely on

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Teacher's 'Clever' Hack For Catching Students Using ChatGPT On Essay

A leading educator has shared a simple hack for catching out students using ChatGPT to write their essays for them.

Though ChatGPT's terms of use say those aged 13 to 18 should only use it with parental permission, research suggests a worrying number of students are already misusing AI in the classroom.

Earlier this month, a survey conducted by the Center for Democracy and Technology revealed a significant increase in U.S. student discipline issues related to the use of generative AI chatbots.

The nationally representative surveys of K-12 public school teachers found 64 percent said students at their school had got into trouble for using or being accused of using AI on a school assignment . That represented a 16 percent increase on the previous year.

Daina Petronis is a full-time curriculum designer and former high school English teacher who runs the online teaching resources community mondaysmadeeasy.com. She believes that while there may come a day when the likes of ChapGPT have a place in the classroom, right now the biggest challenge facing teachers when it comes to language learning models (LLMs) is their potential misuse.

"In theory, LLMs can benefit learning, but there needs to be plenty of support in place to ensure that they are not being misused ," Petronis told Newsweek .

Much of Petronis's work involves researching trends in education, not least when it comes to the use of ChatGPT, the methods available to help teachers catch those using LLMs illicitly, and the limitations around them.

"I am often approached by companies developing AI-detection tools who are looking to promote their software to my audience," she said. "Before sharing these tools with my community, I always ask their representatives about their accuracy. The consistent response from these companies is that there is no surefire method to detect AI."

Another method endorsed by some involves asking the LLM if it produced the work in question. "I've actually tested this with several samples of original writing alongside text generated by an LLM," Petronis said. "I used my own writing that was published years ago and it falsely claimed to have generated it. I also used the writing that it had generated, and it didn't recognize it."

Thankfully, Petronis has hit upon a much simpler approach at weeding out the cheats using what she calls a "trojan horse" hack. In a video posted to her TikTok account mondaysmadeeasy, she explained "this hack is pretty clever and can show you exactly what to look out for without the use of any software of special programs."

She begins by splitting her essay prompt—the title of the essay given to her students—into two paragraphs before adding a sentence in-between in white using the smallest size possible. The idea is that if the essay prompt is copied and pasted into ChatGPT, the teacher can then search for the sentence hidden in the small white font when the assignment is submitted.

Though the video has been watched over one million times, garnering plenty of praise in the process, Petronis acknowledges there are "limitations" to the method.

"If a student happens to notice that there is hidden text in their assignment prompt, then there are some possible outcomes: they can either remove the text or mistake it as a part of the instructions," she said.

However, she feels the positives far outweigh the negatives. "What makes the trojan horse arguably more effective than other methods is that it offers a point of reference that is easy to identify and discuss with a student," she said. "I would not feel comfortable talking to a student about their writing process just because an AI detection tool or an LLM indicates that it's been plagiarized. But if I saw that their work had my trojan horse terms in it, I could simply ask them about it in an open-ended way."

Though the clip has been praised for highlighting a simple way to tackle plagiarism, Petronis said some watching the clip "misunderstood" the message of the video as being "anti-AI." Petronis refutes this suggestion.

"Even though this video sparked a lot of controversy, I think many of us have the same goal—we want what is best for students," she said. "While some people believe this involves training children on AI so that they can use it in the workforce, educators also understand literacy to be a more valuable skill and a prerequisite for using AI appropriately."

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April 26, 2024

With price tags reaching as high as $100 million dollars, forged paintings can be tough to spot. It often takes forensic analysis to expose a clever fake.  

Richard Taylor, a physics professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, has spent the past 3 years investigating whether artificial intelligence can do it more reliably. His research team fed hundreds of abstract art images into a neural network and discovered AI can uncover fakes with shocking accuracy.  

“Our computer can spot a fake far more accurately than a human. Is that a form of artistic appreciation?” Taylor says. “In a way, AI does appreciate an abstract painting. I think it’s fantastic.” 

Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, public awareness of artificial intelligence has exploded, accelerating the technology’s inevitable creep into everyday life. In the University of Oregon College of Arts and Sciences, where AI has made its way into both classrooms and research labs, faculty members are grappling with its impact on student learning even as they explore its vast potential in their research. 

"A lot of people here feel it’s a double-edged sword,” says Ramón Alvarado, assistant professor of philosophy who specializes in data ethics. “AI has the opportunity to be as giving a technology as it is a worrisome technology. We’re a little bit past the hype and the panic, and now we’re thinking about how we can help our students with this.” 

Alvarado leads a group of faculty members who meet regularly to explore the implications of AI for teaching and learning in higher education as part of the Communities Accelerating the Impact of Teaching (CAIT) program . He was surprised to discover that despite their initial hesitancy toward AI, 40% of the group’s members were already implementing the technology in their classrooms, from teaching students to code with Microsoft Copilot AI to incorporating generative AI writing assignments into humanities courses. 

Yet even for the early adopters, AI continues to raise nearly as many questions as answers, causing many educators to rethink how they approach their assignments, what they’re teaching students, how they assess learning and, in some cases, what the role of their entire academic discipline should be in this new AI-driven world. 

"I’m more worried about the apprenticeship part. The steps you take to learn something are what lead to the learning,” Alvarado says.

Learning to cheat or cheating to learn? 

In her English classroom, where the plagiarizing potential of generative AI tools like ChatGPT arguably pose one of the greatest threats to learning, Lara Bovilsky decided to confront the cheating issue head-on. 

After analyzing a six-line speech from Shakespeare’s Macbeth , her students had two different chatbots perform a similar analysis. When Bovilsky asked them to evaluate the AI-generated results, however, most students failed to spot the chatbots’ glaring factual errors. Worse, only one student out of 37 noticed that the chatbots made a series of claims unsupported by any evidence or analysis.  

“It was shocking,” says the associate professor of English. “It was very clear that there was nothing ChatGPT could do to help them understand how to make arguments.”  

In fact, she found, AI seemed to be turning off the very critical thinking skills students need to use the tool wisely—skills that were already underdeveloped due to learning loss during the COVID pandemic. It also failed to achieve her initial goal of preemptively curbing the use of chatbots like ChatGPT to plagiarize assignments. 

“In STEM fields, these machines are enabling calculations that would once have required massive budgets, and now they’re free, for now,” Bovilsky says. “But in these more basic areas of education, where we’re training people to be able to think critically and express themselves accurately, it’s harmful. Students are relying on it and not learning the skills they need.”

Part of the challenge with generative AI is that it arrived just as students were beginning to face the true extent of their learning loss during the pandemic—a civic crisis in its own right, Bovilsky says, as some educators struggle to teach a growing number of students who need remedial help.  

Under mounting pressure to regain their lost ground, more students may feel driven to the point of desperation, Bovilsky explains. And by placing the means to plagiarize freely at students’ fingertips, generative AI has in many ways “democratized” cheating, Alvarado adds. 

The resulting flurry of accusations of AI-related misconduct has raised even more questions about how to effectively address these incidents—even prompting some faculty members to try their hand at designing AI-proof assignments, or to ask students for video reports rather than written papers. 

In the Department of Philosophy, for example, professors no longer give out written assignments. Instead, students take a brief oral exam at the end of each class. 

“Some of us are rethinking and reassessing our relationship to our discipline and how we teach it,” Alvarado adds. 

Preparing students for an AI world 

Artificial intelligence is raising similar existential questions among professionals in fields beyond academia, where generative AI is becoming increasingly adept at doing what many people previously thought only humans could do. 

In the film industry, AI has generated a new ethical thicket with its ability to create convincing videos known as “deepfakes,” which have recently been used to resurrect a dead dictator to sway Indonesia’s presidential election.  

“With all the talk about the threats of AI, I think we should focus more on AI literacy and helping students use AI in a responsible, ethical and creative way,” says Ari Purnama, assistant professor of cinema studies.  “In educating a new generation of future filmmakers and creative professionals, I think we ought to leverage AI in a responsible way to help them be competitive. If you don’t have the ability to use AI responsibly, I think you’re going to be at a disadvantage.”  

While the UO strongly encourages instructors to set explicit policies about generative AI in their course syllabus, there’s no one-size-fits-all institutional policy that can cover every classroom—largely because AI affects each discipline differently. Its impact is much different in a humanities classroom, where learning to write is a primary focus, versus a science lab, where writing plays a more secondary role, Alvarado says. 

“In our CAIT group, we have people who feel students should be encouraged to use AI for guidance, and others who say students absolutely cannot use it,” says Phil Colbert, senior instructor of computer science and director of the computer information technology minor. “It depends on the department.” 

According to a February article in the Emerald , the disparity between classroom AI policies across campus can sometimes cause confusion for students, who may go from one class in which AI is banned to another in which its use is encouraged. 

English major Elizabeth Burket-Thoene has noticed more professors integrating AI into their assignments this year. While the third-year student is interested in exploring its uses as a tool, she’s also wary of asking chatbots for help on assignments. 

“Right now, I feel like I'm a little more careful when asking for ideas and things like that. For me personally, it’s super important to be able to work through things on my own,” she says.

Despite concerns about cheating, educators are discovering that the technology can be a powerful equalizer for students with anxiety, who struggle to articulate their ideas, or who come from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. AI also has the potential to provide personalized tutoring and other tools to support academic success. 

Reaping these benefits requires students to develop AI literacy, however—something they also will need in their future careers as proficiency with AI tools becomes a must-have skill across nearly every industry.  

“From a commercial perspective, when students get out in the field, their bosses or clients will expect them to know how to use these tools,” Colbert says. “As an educational institution, we are figuring out how to train students to use these tools—and if they use them, they’re going to use them to their advantage.”

—Nicole Krueger, BA ’99 (journalism), is a communications coordinator for the College of Arts and Sciences.

The Language of AI

Need help understanding AI terminology? Here are some essential definitions from IBM:

Artificial intelligence : Technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human intelligence and problem-solving capabilities.

Machine learning : A branch of artificial intelligence that uses data and algorithms to enable AI to imitate the way humans learn, gradually improving its accuracy.

Natural language processing : A branch of artificial intelligence that enables computers and digital devices to recognize, understand and generate text and speech.

Generative AI : Deep-learning models that can generate high-quality text, images, and other content based on the data they were trained on.

Neural network : A machine learning program that mimics the way biological neurons work together to makes decisions in a manner similar to the human brain.