How to Check If Something Is AI-Generated

With the recent developments in AI and more specifically, GPT-3 having been made available, it has become easier than ever before to generate human-like text without actually writing. What this means is that more and more AI-generated text is published online.

While AI for content generation can be beneficial, there are concerns about people misusing the technology to publish low-quality texts on the Web. And as you may know, Google won’t rank any content that adds little to no value to the target audience.

Therefore, it’s becoming increasingly important to be able to distinguish between text generated by humans and text generated using AI. That’s the reason why I wrote this article on how to check whether something was written by AI. Read on to discover the details!

Read also: How to Humanize AI-Generated Content

How to Check for AI Content Manually

GPT-3 is a language model adopted by AI writing tools that can write pieces of text that look as though they were written by humans. GPT-4, which recently came out, can even write better content.

However, some text-generation tools write better than others. It’s possible to discover robotic text from low-quality tools if you know where to look.

Below, I’ll give you ideas on how to manually check for AI-generated text.

Repetition of Specific Words or Phrases

One thing that indicates AI-generated text is the repetitive use of particular phrases or words. Because AI algorithms are trained on vast amounts of data, they learn to identify patterns and correlations within a specified dataset. This can result in them generating repeated phrases or words several times in a piece of text.

This repetition can make the text appear robotic or formulaic and lack the creativity and variation of typical human-written content. Assuming it was a good writer creating content around a specific topic, they would try not to repeat using the same sentences or concepts and even use synonyms when needed.

Lack of Emotional Context

One way to distinguish something written by a robot from one by a writer is emotional context. Human writers often write with emotion and incorporate their personalities and tone into their writing. This can include using humor, sarcasm, or even anger or frustration to convey a message in their writing.

AI-generated content, on the other hand, lacks the human touch. The reason is that they learn from analyzing large sets of information and not personal experiences like humans. The content will usually be strictly focused on providing information factually and straightforwardly.

Robotic text often doesn’t contain personal pronouns like “I,” we,” “you,” and “they.” In other words, the content doesn’t talk to the reader directly.

Inaccurate or Outdated Information

You’ll find that a particular AI language model was trained using data up to a specific period. And so, the generated text will only contain the older information and lack any information from that time forward.

So, check if things like company information, quotes, and statistics in a document are accurate. If they look like they’re too good to be true, the text was likely written using AI.

How to Check for AI Content Using AI Text Detection Tools

While the linguistic indicators that you can consider when checking for AI content, many AI writers are intelligent and improving. You can easily fail to identify whether a piece of text was written using AI.

That’s why AI content checkers exist. They work instantly to save you time and are more accurate since they can spot the patterns in a document that’s AI-generated. These AI text detection tools can perform the task because they use the same learning method as AI writers.

It’s simple how these tools work. They’re just like plagiarism checkers but for AI text in this case and not copied content. All you need to do is:

• Copy the text you want to verify or import a document
• Paste the text into the AI content detector’s editor
• Click on  the button that says to scan the content

The tool will show you the percentage of the text that’s likely written by AI or whether it’s probably human-authored content. Some of them highlight the parts that appear to be AI-generated so you can make changes as required. I’ll go into detail about some of the best AI detectors available below.

Originality.AI

Originality.AI is among the top tools to detect AI content with high accuracy. The tool is built for content publishers and can flag GPT-3 content from AI writers like ChatGPT.

For example, if you’re buying a website, you can check whether actual humans wrote the content or just hastily put together using AI with no regard for the value it offers. It can also help website owners and editors find out whether any submitted drafts to be published are human-authored.

Originality.AI even has a browser extension for Chrome that you can use anywhere when browsing. You simply copy the text on the web page and paste it for scanning.

What’s more, Originality.AI can also check for plagiarism. It’s an affordable alternative to the expensive plagiarism checkers, costing only $0.01 per 100 words per scan.

Winston AI

Another great AI text detector that can identify AI-generated content is Winston AI. This is a tool that works well for content writers, web publishers, and educators alike.

For a content writer, you can use it to edit out AI-generated text to ensure your content is original. If you’re a web publisher, Winston AI is perfect for verifying your writer’s content. As an educator, you may benefit from it when it comes to ensuring academic integrity from students.

And, it gets even better. Winston AI even has OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to extract text on images and identify if it’s from an AI tool. So, you can easily upload a photo containing text or a scanned hand-written document and still verify it.

Winston AI is free for up to 2,000 words. The paid plan starts from $18 a month for more scans.

Copyleaks

Copyleaks is a popular anti-plagiarism software tool that can easily compare text against a large number of sources online. It also has an AI content detector that you can use to filter out ChatGPT or GPT-3 text. This tool not only shows you the probability of something being AI-written but also shows highlights in the text.

Like other AI detectors, Copyleaks utilizes AI technology and machine learning to continuously improve and understand complex patterns in writing. Also, Copyleaks supports more than one language. Besides English, you can check for AI in German, Italian, and French content, among others.

Why You Need to Check If Something Is AI-Generated

There are several reasons why you might want to check if something is AI-generated. Here are some of them:

• Accuracy: AI-generated content can be useful in some contexts, but it may not always be accurate. Checking whether something is AI-generated can help you determine the reliability of the information before you use or publish it.
• Authenticity: AI-generated content doesn’t have the personal touch that human-written content can provide. It’s crucial to ensure that a piece of content is genuine and based on personal experiences or actual opinions.
• Quality: Depending on what has been written, AI may fail to provide the quality that an experienced writer would. In this case, the writing will add little or no value to a reader and not bring the desired results.
• Legal concerns: In some scenarios, such as advertising or legal documents, it may be essential to know if particular content was generated by AI to keep out of legal troubles. Some legal requirements or regulations may apply differently to content that is created by AI versus content that is created by humans.

Conclusion

As you’ve seen, it’s not difficult to know whether a piece of writing is AI-generated. You can either do it manually by looking for linguistic indicators like repetition or use an AI detection tool.

Know that manually checking for AI can be challenging since many AI writing platforms are well-trained to write like people. The best idea is to combine your human editing skills with an AI text checker.

This way, you can avoid issues like inaccuracy, lack of human perspective, and poor quality. If your content is valuable and not just quickly AI-created, more people are likely to read it and take action on it!