With the rise of ChatGPT, more and more people are using AI as a tool for writing, streamlining their processes and meeting tighter deadlines. However, the use of AI can also cause higher plagiarism rates, repetitive copy, and content that is more generalized, offering less value to your readers.
While AI can be a helpful tool in the creative process, relying on generators to do all of your writing for you brings down the quality of your content. To ensure better writing across their websites, business owners and marketers are continuously looking for ways to ensure that AI has not been used in their projects — like turning to AI detection tools.
However, can we trust these tools to give us accurate results? Let’s find out together!
How AI Detectors Work
AI detectors are a type of software that uses machine learning and natural language processing to determine if a piece of copy has been generated by AI. They look for predictable wording, a lack of diversity in sentence structure and length, and repetitive content. For example, AI generators love to use phrases like “delve into,” “nestled in,” and “in the dynamic world of.” Detection software can scan the text for phrases like these, and flag them as possible indicators that the content was written by AI. (For real — as I’m writing this, I put this paragraph into an AI detector, and it flagged the sentence with those phrases as possibly AI written! Actually, the whole score changed just because I added this side note — we’ll talk about this more later!)
What To Look for in an AI Detection Tool
The ideal AI detector should be affordable, accurate, and adaptable. AI generators are constantly changing and learning to be more human-passing, so your detector needs to be able to keep up! Plus — most importantly — you need to be able to rely on the results. How awful would it be to work for hours on a blog, only for an unreliable AI detector to call it 100% AI? And how bad would it be to have to pay for this detector to basically lie to you?
Don’t waste your time and money jumping from software to software. The Panda Copy team has done that for you!
Are Detection Tools Accurate?
The truth is that no AI detection software is 100% accurate. In fact, Turnitin’s AI detection has falsely identified multiple college essays as AI-written, causing the students to face disciplinary hearings to defend themselves by showing their revision history.
These detectors can only use probability; they aren’t like plagiarism detection, which uses solid evidence to check against copy. Probability will never be perfect.
Remember earlier in this blog, when I discussed how AI detection works and added in a note about that very paragraph receiving a high AI percentage? See the proof for yourself!
Because I switched from a factual, more formal tone with some of AI’s favorite phrases to a more conversational side note, the entire score changed. The entire paragraph was written by me, but because the detector can only give a score based on how similar the copy reads as AI, it generated a false score.
How Do Some of the Most Popular Detectors Stack Up?
There are too many AI detectors out there to count, so today, we’re sticking to three of the most popular options for checking for AI — both free and paid!
Originality.ai
Before we get to the free detectors, let’s look at Originality.ai.
Benefits
- Offers AI detection as well as plagiarism and readability scans
- Highlights sentences based on a scale of the copy’s likelihood to be AI
- Offers a Google Chrome extension for free
- Can work for other languages
Drawbacks
- No free options
- Can give false AI scores to human-written content depending on what version you use
Pricing
You can use Originality through a monthly subscription or a pay-as-you-go plan. The subscription is $14.95 per month while the pay-as-you-go is $30 for every 300,000 words.
Reliability
Originality offers several “levels” of detection: Standard 2.0.0, Standard 2.0.1, Turbo 3.0, Multi Language, and Lite.
The screenshots I used earlier were from Originality, where my personally written content scored for 94% AI before I added a bit more personality to the mix. Those scans were using the Standard 2.0.0 level. Here are the results for the same paragraph — the original, without the side note! — at the different levels of detection.
Note: The Multi Language was not applicable to be used in this example.
Turbo
Standard 2.0.1
Lite
Based on these findings, the Lite was the most accurate option for human-written content. Now, let’s test these levels against actual AI content from ChatGPT!
Standard 2.0.0
Turbo 3.0
Standard 2.0.1
Lite
Originality properly scored AI content each time! Based on the accuracy for both AI and human-written content, our team would say that the Lite and Turbo 3.0 levels are the two best options to use.
Copyleaks
Copyleaks is another one of the most popular options for AI detection. Let’s see how it compares to Originality.
Benefits
- Can be added to Chrome as an extension
- Uses highlighting to indicate AI-written content
- Offers plagiarism detection if you upgrade to a paid plan
Drawbacks
- Only five free scans per day
- Does not offer an option for other languages
Reliability
I used the same AI and human-written paragraphs from earlier to see how Copyleaks scored them. The results were pretty accurate, with my content scoring for 100% human and the ChatGPT content as 100% AI.
AI Content
Human Content
Overall, Copyleaks is a solid option, but the limited free scans keep it from being a true fan favorite.
ZeroGPT
Finally, I tested out ZeroGPT. Let’s look at how it measured up.
Benefits
- Completely free
- Can work with multiple languages
- Easy to use
Drawbacks
- Has been found to be inaccurate
- Has ad pop-ups
Reliability
Let’s see if the user reports ring true about the accuracy — or lack thereof — of ZeroGPT.
AI Content
Human Content
While ZeroGPT did score the AI content accurately, it found the human-written content to be 42% AI, making it the least reliable option on this list.
The Bottom Line
While no AI detector is perfect, some are definitely better than others. Based on the results of my comparison, I’ve found Copyleaks and Originality.ai to be the most reliable options.
You can’t guarantee a 100% accurate detection score, but you can get close. At Panda Copy, we use Originality.ai to test out our writer’s work. If you’re looking for copy that’s consistent, written by real people, and delivered to you quickly, check out our services today!
