While artificial intelligence, or AI, is not new, it exploded in 2022 after ChatGPT and similar products were released. Now, it seems like AI is here to stay as more and more programs for creating artificial text, art, pictures, and videos appear. And so, it is only natural that it gets into the hands of those without scruples who will exploit it in unethical ways. So, here we’ll talk about some ways to recognize and detect the use of AI and the non-creative writing that comes with it.
Acceptable and Unethical AI Exploitation
Using AI to write text is not bad in itself, especially when used to enhance the writing experience. However, AI text can be rather bland when used as generated if the prompts used to create it were not very creative to begin with. This is just one of the reasons why people want to know if they are getting AI-generated content. Some people frown upon it without needing a cause. Whatever the reason may be, there are ways to tell if the text was generated by AI.
Recognizing AI-Generated Text
Distinguishing AI-written text from human-written text is also essential because there are some concerns about plagiarism and copyright infringement. After all, AI operates by using machine learning and data created by somebody else. Still, the result is the most average output possible, something that indicates there should be concerns about quality.
AI detection tools quickly appeared to address the clear need for recognizing AI-written content. They are to help people check for originality and human content against AI-generated ones. The hope is that this will allow us to maintain the creativity of human expression. Those tools, while useful, don’t always work well enough and can be fooled, so advances in that direction will likely occur in the future.
Understanding How AI Writing Works
AI writers use a large language model algorithm with a massive dataset. They get trained to build sentences by predicting the words likely to be placed next to one another while maintaining the context. It is a very successful formula, and generally, AI gets it right. However, there are times when falsehoods occur, and those are called hallucinations. These take place around 20% of the time and are not to be underestimated.
Companies often make their own AI models with their company-owned data to do particular tasks related to their business. The publicly available AI models do various tasks and are trained with publicly available data from the internet. It includes SEO content, news articles, social media content, and more. It also means they can be recognized following the signs and patterns.
Monotony and the Missing Human Touch
Despite its impressiveness, AI still cannot understand anything. It means it’s an algorithm with no real context for what a conversation is about or what is asked of it. It lacks ethics and fails to understand irony. It can replicate existing content without adding emotion or nuance to the text. So, the result is that after reading AI text for a while, one can start recognizing it based on particular phrases and monotonous patterns.
Why Detecting AI Is Important
AI writing comes with many ethical issues related to integrity and morals, but when it comes to education, it can hurt people. Plagiarism detection is now more complicated than ever due to the use of AI, and educators struggle to determine when an assignment is actually the student’s work.
Exiting schools, the problem goes to other sectors like journalism, marketing, and public relations, where professionals risk their credibility if they fail to find the content they use is written by AI. AI hallucinations can generate false information by generating content that the user will accept. False data is certainly something to watch for.
Detecting AI Writing
AI Detection Tools
The first step is to use AI detection tools. There are so many out there. You can even use several for the identical text, to be sure. AI and detection tools will likely evolve together, always giving the user an option and ultimately improving themselves as time progresses.
Using the tools is straightforward and usually involves uploading a document or pasting text into the program. The system analyzes the text and gives you results. Some of the best tools currently out there include Copyleaks, Originality AI, and Scribbr AI Detector, among others. It is crucial to note that these tools are not perfect, but when used alongside other AI detection methods, they give more accurate results.
Semantic Consistency
AI writing tools face challenges in preserving a consistent narrative, and that shows in noticeable shifts in topics or awkward transitions that are otherwise illogical. AI generates text incrementally, predicting the most probable symbol to be accepted by the user. The longer the generated content, the higher the likelihood of deviating becomes. If you see something similar in a text you are reading, there is a good chance that AI has been used to generate it.
Source Authenticity
Checking the source of information within a text can show that AI has a hand in making it. AI will fabricate quotes and reference non-existent works, articles, papers, or other sources. This is a dead AI giveaway, so check if the cited sources exist and if the information reflects the text.
Language Analysis
Once you’ve done an initial scan with an AI detection tool, an additional measure is to do a language analysis. Language analysis techniques can show inconsistencies and repetitive patterns typical for AI-generated text. AI writing is predictable and repetitive and fails to emulate a writer’s style throughout a long text, which can be seen using a language analysis tool.
Plagiarism Detection Tools
Finding plagiarism in a text is another sign that AI may have been involved in creating it. It is either because the AI was asked to write the related text so many times that it resembles itself or because the deviation from the original text is not enough.
The integration of AI into creative processes has been unavoidable since 2022, but it doesn’t have to be detrimental to writers and readers alike. At least for now, there are ways to detect AI content, and anyone who is diligent enough can ensure the text they’re reading has the style and credibility it deserves.
