AI is currently one of the fastest-evolving technologies and has been implemented in many industries. AI has also had a significant impact on society as people have found uses for one of the most popular AI generators, ChatGPT. Though other chatbots are available, ChatGPT was an instant hit, with over 13 million unique users per day within two months of its release in November 2022. Those numbers have continued to grow. In late 2024, over 600 million people use ChatGPT every month.
The power of AI is clear with all those users actively including ChatGPT in their activities at work, school, and other tasks. What many don't realize is that the increased usage is benefiting the AI generator. AI is taught on previously existing content. Articles, blog posts, entire books, and others, are fed into the AI generators to train them. The more information AI generators consume, the more they learn and adapt. The two-way street of AI use benefits both the user and the generator. The continued use of AI generators has made them increasingly accurate and better at the tasks users ask them to perform. This is why an AI detector is more important than ever.
AI detectors in common use
AI detectors are used in academic and workplace settings to determine the authenticity of written work.
Students have long tried to find easy ways to do their schoolwork. Whether they are in grade school or university, there will always be those students willing to pay others to do their assignments. AI generators have made things much simpler for those wanting to skirt their responsibilities and cheat. Chatbots like ChatGPT can help produce outlines, synopses, summaries, and even full reports with a few simple prompts. This has made the use of AI much more common, even by those who don't see it as cheating and only use it as a starting point for their projects. There has been a lot of discussion among educators as to how to use AI ethically in the classroom and schoolwork, but there has yet to be a consensus formed.
At the college/university level, AI-generated work is considered to be plagiarized because AI is trained on existing content. It is also considered cheating. Therefore, there is a risk of a degree being denied or revoked if it's discovered that AI was used by the student.
In the workplace, many workers depend on AI to create concise, professional emails. They also use AI in the preparation of reports, presentations, and other work-related content. Though some companies have started to implement AI into their processes to eliminate repetitive tasks by employees, there are limits to how much use is allowed. This can vary from company to company. There is a danger in using AI in the workplace if the company is not supportive of the technology and could threaten continued employment. AI-generated content is sometimes regarded as fraudulent and a sign of a lazy worker who isn't invested in their work.
AI versus AI
In the early days of AI, the prose the AI generators churned out wasn't close to sounding human in origin. It had all the telltale signs of being generated by a robot with stilted prose and odd quirks such as repetitive words and exaggerated claims. Sometimes when the AI didn't have an answer, it made up a response. Since those early days, great strides have been made in AI, making it harder for humans to determine if something is AI-generated.
AI generators evolve over time due to machine learning. As more data is fed into the AI generators, they learn patterns and develop algorithms to improve themselves. Like predictive text in a phone or search engine, AI generators learn to predict how to compose like a human. As time goes on, AI generators will become even more adept at mimicking human interactions and actions. However, they currently lack the nuance of human speech. There are still ways to determine if text is genuinely human or not, but AI detectors are the fastest and most accurate way to verify the origins.
AI detectors have improved significantly since they were first released. AI detectors are also taught on both AI and human-generated text, so they will learn to tell the difference between the two. The AI detectors look for specific signs that a written piece has been produced by an AI while scanning the text, like how long or short sentences and paragraphs are, and the complexity of the prose. AI is often very dry in its language, repetitive, and can be hyperbolic by using a lot of adjectives. Because AI lacks human understanding, it often produces very boring content. Humans, meanwhile, are much more complex in their writing, often constructing sentences and paragraphs of varying lengths and different structures, creating a more engaging narrative.
AI detectors can determine the approximate percentage of the content in the selected text that has been created by AI and flag sentences or pieces of a sentence that indicate AI use. Some AI detectors can also ascertain how much of the text has been plagiarized. Since AI is trained on pre-existing content, there is the possibility of AI-generated text being flagged as being plagiarized. Some AI detectors specifically look for plagiarized text and will include it in their reports.
Understanding the accuracy of AI detectors
AI detectors can produce false reports. With the increased use of AI detectors in academia and the workplace, checking written works before submission is a wise path to take to make certain that text isn't flagged inaccurately. If the AI detector determines that something in the text is AI-written, the author can revise that section to read as authentically human. This can also help avoid accusations of plagiarism.
The use of AI generators continues to stir controversy, but many are seeking ethical ways to use them in academic and work settings. Some professionals advise using AI as a starting point to establish a foundation for a project. ChatGPT is often used as a research resource, though it does need to be double-checked and verified. It is increasingly clear that the use of AI generators is widespread, and this is why AI detectors have become so important.
