One controversial aspect of AI continues to be the ethical use of it for financial gain.
This is especially prevalent in the content creation space, where bloggers can utilize AI to mass-produce content.
These blogs earn money through things like ad revenue and affiliate links.
With a higher volume of content, there is the potential to exponentially grow your earnings.
There has also been growing concern about using AI to generate school assignments in high schools and colleges.
Teachers have been stepping up their defenses by scanning assignments for signs of AI writing.
If you are wondering how to check for AI writing, you’re in the right place.
We’re about to tackle the topic of AI detection and dispel the myths about detecting AI writing online and in school assignments.
Is There a Way to Detect AI Writing?
This is a complicated question and here’s why: there is AI detector software that can be used to scan text for AI writing.
Unfortunately, these detectors can only provide the likelihood that the text was written by AI.
They can never provide complete confirmation that any text was written by AI rather than a human.
For most of these AI detectors, all you need to do is paste in the text you want to check and scan it for AI writing.
The software will usually provide you with an AI detection score which is the percentage chance that the text was generated by AI.
The higher the score, the more signs this text is showing predictable patterns of AI-generated writing.
Of course, those predictable patterns can also be caught by a trained human eye. AI-generated writing tends to use the same structure, syntax, and word choice.
This gives AI writing an inherently mechanical feel to it. Don’t worry, we’ll go more into this later on in the article.
Why is it Important to Verify AI Writing?
It is important to verify AI writing in certain circumstances when there is an unethical use of AI.
For example, students handing in AI-generated assignments for school is considered to be a breach of academic integrity and the school can choose to discipline the student if they are caught.
Many employers have also started checking work submitted by employees for AI writing. This can include websites that hire freelance writers to produce content for them.
Any indication of AI writing and there is a good chance that the writer will no longer be hired by that company.
As for content creation, the jury is still out. For now, Google has stated that it is not punishing AI-generated content.
Google runs its own powerful AI detectors that can flag your page for AI writing. While it won’t dock you any ad revenue it has issued new SEO rules that include a high rating if you can provide first-hand knowledge and experience.
Of course, this is something that AI is not able to do efficiently, yet.
What Are the Steps for Proofreading AI-Generated Content? How to Check for AI Writing
If you are using an AI writing tool like ChatGPT to create content, you’re certainly not alone.
Once you’ve created the text you want to use, taking the extra steps to proofread it can save you a lot of time and grief.
Here are some ways you can consider when proofreading your AI-generated content.
Read the Content Carefully From Beginning to End
Reading your content from front to back should always be the first thing you do. Copying and pasting AI writing without proofreading is a sure way to get flagged by an AI detector.
This is a great time to make edits to the syntax and structure of the text.
AI writing tools tend to have a very predictable text pattern which leads to that mechanical feel we talked about earlier.
Check for Factual Accuracy
You should never just copy AI-generated content and submit it without checking it over.
Why? AI-written content is notorious for providing factual inaccuracies. These are known as AI hallucinations.
The worst part about AI hallucinations is that they will provide these incorrect statements and believe that everything they produce is accurate.
When reviewing your AI-generated text you should always be checking for any potential inaccuracies that the AI produced.
Check for Grammar, Spelling, and Punctuation Errors
Your first inclination is probably that AI should be getting things like grammar, spelling, and punctuation correct.
While this is true most of the time, there are certainly occasions when AI content will have grammatical errors. Punctuation is also another important thing to look at.
Considering that AI has tendencies to use the same sentence structures and a simpler writing style, you can enhance the text quite a bit by changing some of the punctuation.
This will make the text appear more “human” to both readers and AI detectors.
Check for Style and Readability
Style and readability might be difficult concepts to quantify, but every good writer knows how to spot them as soon as they read the text.
AI writing tools tend to use two concepts that make it a bit more predictable: perplexity and burstiness. Perplexity speaks to how predictable your text is which is a major characteristic of AI writing.
Burstiness is how predictable and similar the sentence structure and lengths are.
Both perplexity and burstiness impact the style and readability of the text.
AI-generated text typically has a low score in both. This is because AI wants to explain things to readers in a simple manner and avoid complexities that impact the readability of the content.
Check for Plagiarism
Wait, AI can plagiarize text? Absolutely. It’s not common, but it happens more than you might think.
Why would AI be caught plagiarizing other text? Well, AI doesn’t know it is plagiarism.
To produce outputs to your prompts, AI scans millions, if not billions, of real, written data points.
These data points form the basis of how these AI writing tools create text responses. Occasionally, an AI tool can take a passage directly from another text.
To mitigate this, always run your AI-generated text through a plagiarism checker like Copyleaks.
How Can You Detect Plagiarism in AI-Generated Writing?
There might come a day when you suspect that the AI-generated writing you have in front of you may be plagiarised.
How do you even check this? Well, the first thing you can do is scan that text through an AI plagiarism checker like CopyLeaks.
If you’re wondering how to detect plagiarism in AI text, here are a few things you can look out for.
Verifying Repetitive Language
One sure giveaway of AI-generated plagiarism is the overuse of repetitive language.
Why would AI use repetitive language? You might not realize it but a lot of online text has repetitive word use due to keyword stuffing for SEO ranking.
AI also tends to conform to conservative text patterns which often results in words or phrases being repeated throughout the text.
Verifying Unusual Word Choices
As much as AI uses repetitive language, sometimes it can do the complete opposite.
This inconsistency is one reason why AI text is fairly easy to spot.
If you notice any unusual word choices that just wouldn’t sound natural coming from a human writer, you’ve probably stumbled upon some AI text that is trying its hardest to blend in.
Verifying Lack of Flow
We’ve already touched on how robotic and mechanical AI writing can sound. Typically, AI text sounds choppy and lacks the flow that human writing has.
This is because AI writing tools tend to stick to the same sentence structure and syntax which results in uniform text that has a low readability score.
If there isn’t a good flow to the writing, there is a good chance it was written by AI.
Verifying Lack of Originality
Even though we say that AI writing tools “write text”, they are more like text producers.
There is no deep-level understanding of what is being written, especially compared to a human writer. Because of this, AI text often feels cliche and lacks originality.
Some would also say that AI writing has no soul to it which is right in line with the lack of flow and mechanical feel that we talked about earlier.
Using Online Plagiarism Checkers
There are plenty of AI plagiarism checkers on the market including the previously mentioned CopyLeaks and others like Originality.
How do these apps work? Just like AI detectors, all you need to do is paste your text into the plagiarism detector and scan it.
These AI tools will run that text against millions of online datasets and come back with an AI plagiarism score.
Again, these scores are the probability that AI plagiarism was used and not a certainty.
How Do Professors Detect AI-Generated Writing?
If you are a student and you are trying to use AI to complete your assignments, you might want to keep reading.
Professors at colleges and universities around the world are learning how to use AI detector tools to stop dishonest students from handing in AI-generated work.
According to one of the most widely used sites, TurnItIn.com, its built-in AI detection tool is used by more than 98% of its clients.
If you attend one of the more than 16,000 schools in over 140 countries that use TurnItIn.com, then your professor is already equipped with one of the best AI detectors on the market.
If they don’t use TurnItIn.com, there’s a high probability that they are using one of the many other AI detectors on the market.
The lesson here: just do your homework, kids.
What Factors Should Be Considered When Evaluating AI Writing Tools?
When evaluating which AI writing tools to use the first thing you need to consider is what the purpose is.
Are you looking to prepare a large amount of content for a website or blog? Or are you using it to write journalist articles? Or maybe you’re just using AI to make decisions for you like a recipe that matches the contents of your fridge.
There are as many different AI writing tools as there are reasons for using them.
Another factor might be price. The higher-end tools come with more features but also come with a higher price tag.
There are plenty of apps that come with a free version with limited features, but for your purposes that might be enough.
Finally, do some research and find which AI tools provide the highest-quality outputs. Remember that most of these tools are built on the same platforms.
If one is getting higher reviews or has more features or is cheaper, then it’s probably going to present as the best value.
What are tips for enhancing the quality of AI-generated writing?
1. Use Clear and Concise Prompts
Before you get the best outputs from your AI writing tools, you need to learn how to provide the best prompts.
Prompt engineering is an art form when it comes to AI tools. Be clear and concise with your instructions and your AI tool will soon learn to provide high-quality outputs.
Great prompts can really put the learning in machine learning!
2. Provide Context
AI tools always need context. Remember that these tools are really just taking your instructions and producing text that it believes best matches your prompts.
The more detail and context you can provide to the AI writing tool, the better your chances of getting high-quality text.
For example, your output will improve exponentially just by telling your AI writing tool what you are using the content for and what you expect your audience to get from it.
3. Use Multiple AI Tools
If you can swing it, using multiple AI tools can cover your bases. Now, this doesn’t mean using three different LLMs to produce alternative forms of the same text.
This means using an AI tool to produce content, an AI tool to check for plagiarism, and then another AI tool to humanize it so it doesn’t get flagged by AI detectors.
4. Edit and Proofread the AI-Generated Text
Always always always edit and proofread your AI text before anything else. We cannot stress this enough.
Handing in AI text without editing is just asking to be caught by an AI detector. If you’re doing this for a blog, there’s a good chance Google will dock you for providing low-quality content that lacks the principles of EEAT.
You should always proofread your content as well to avoid issues like poor grammar, robotic flow, and factual inaccuracies.
5. Use AI to Supplement Your Own Writing
If there is one way to view AI as a writing tool it is to use it to supplement your own writing. As a writer, you should always want to rely on your own writing first and provide original content.
If you need help with research or are stuck with writer’s block, then AI can be a great tool to use. As well, running a quick AI detection scan before submitting your work is always a good idea.
Not only will this save you any grief of being flagged as AI-written, but it also tells you that the writing style you are using needs some heart and soul.
6. Use Templates
Using AI templates is also helpful in quickly getting the best potential outputs from your AI tool.
These AI prompt templates are pre-crafted to get a great response and can help cut down on going back and forth with AI until you get an output that you are satisfied with.
There are plenty of free AI prompt templates available online.
7. Use AI to Generate Outlines
You don’t always have to use AI to write all of your content. Sometimes the best way to use it is just to create a blueprint for yourself by generating an outline instead.
You can customize these to be SEO-friendly as well. This is another example of using AI to supplement your own writing.
8. Use AI to Translate Languages
Occasionally, you’re going to need to translate other languages while researching for writing.
Using an AI writing tool to do this is just as easy as heading over to Google Translate.
Translation is just another of the countless ways that AI can enhance the quality of your writing.
9. Use AI to Generate Summaries
Just as with outlines, generating a summary or paraphrasing is a great way to utilize the power of AI.
AI paraphraser tools like QuillBot can take large amounts of text and summarize it, saving you hours of research and reading.
10. Use AI to Generate Different Creative Text Formats
This is where you can use AI to get really creative with your content. You can utilize your writing tool to provide different text formats like journalism or academic writing styles.
Some of the better tools will even generate text based on who the expected reader is. This can mean writing for experts or beginners on a certain subject.
How can I Make AI Writing Undetectable?
At the end of the day, most people are asking the same thing: how can I make AI writing Undetectable? No matter how much content you make with AI, you need to still review it and edit it to make it bypass AI detectors.
Luckily for you, the folks at Undetectable.AI are trying to take that work out of your hands. As its name suggests, Undetectable is a tool that can be used to make your text undetectable by AI detectors.
Rather than spending time reading over every AI-generated word, you can simply Humanize the text with Undetectable’s app.
This will provide you with content that will bypass the best AI detectors on the market.
Undetectable.AI works with both AI and human-written content to pass those pesky AI detectors.
One thing to note for students, Undetectable.AI has a strict No Academic Misconduct in its terms of service.
Failing to abide by these terms of service could land you in some trouble and potentially get your account disabled.
Conclusion
It’s 2023 and if you had asked about AI writing two years ago you would have been laughed at.
Today, the writing industry is creating more and more tools to combat AI-generated content. Checking for AI writing is critical for both academic honesty and factual accuracy.
Using tools to check for AI writing and plagiarism is a booming market. As you saw in this article, there is a tool for nearly every part of the writing process.
You can create your entire text with AI, summarize it, paraphrase it, edit it, and even humanize it.
Until AI-generated content evolves and becomes indiscernible from human writing, these tools are going to be what uphold the ethical side of using AI for writing.