First, it was AI writing tools like Jarvis, then came the user-friendly LLM chatbot: ChatGPT, which brought AI-generated content to the mainstream. With AI-powered content now a ubiquitous presence across industries, it’s easier than ever to produce high-volume written works in a fraction of the original time frame.
AI content in and of itself isn’t bad, nor is it against Google’s policies for web publishers, but with newfound accessibility comes the potential for low-quality content and oversaturation. To address this issue, multiple entities have developed AI text detectors to help curb the misuse of AI text generators, such as the practice of using ChatGPT to write entire college essays.
In this article, we’ll take a look at the best free and paid AI detection tools to determine the degree of originality of writeups you produce and/or consume. That said, AI content detection is still in it’s early days, and none of them are fully reliable just yet.
AI Text Classifier: OpenAI’s Native AI Detector
Price: Free
AI Text Classifier is a free tool created by OpenAI to help people detect AI-generated text within the content. However, the company has admitted that the Classifier is only partially accurate and advised users not to rely on it entirely.
Even worse, the tool could mistakenly identify human-written content as AI-generated. To improve the tool’s reliability, users must continuously train the Classifier by feeding it with a larger amount of text.
The Classifier may fail when it comes to detecting text with less than 1,000 words and could generate incorrect analyses that lead to unreliable results. The tool’s accuracy is also low when applied to heavily edited AI-generated content, which could bypass most artificial intelligence detection tools.
In addition, the Classifier is based on a neural network, which is an advanced tech, but also one of the tool’s biggest weaknesses.
Why? Because neural networks rely heavily on a large training set, which may cause them to miss identifying any text or information that wasn’t included in their training.
GPTZero: Preferred by Educators
Price: Free
GPTZero is a free tool designed to help educators detect AI content inside the classroom by identifying text generated by artificial intelligence, specifically ChatGPT. The tool is technically called a ‘classification model’ and was developed by Edward Tian, a Princeton University computer science and journalism student.
The tool analyzes the complexity and randomness of the text to determine whether a machine or a human created it. Moreover, GPTZero was trained on both human-written and AI-generated text, enabling it to distinguish between these two types of content.
GPTZero also provides scores on aspects such as ‘Average Perplexity’ and ‘Burstiness,’ which measure the randomness and variation of content, respectively.
The tool became popular among educators who were in dire need of a deterrent against the rampant AI content created by ChatGPT. However, its developers were quick to disclose that GPTZero might not always accurately detect AI-generated text.
Furthermore, while it may currently keep pace with OpenAI’s technology, future iterations of ChatGPT may possess more advanced capabilities, such as generating text in a more human-like way.
In fact, with the anticipated release of GPT-4 large language model (LLM) this year, today’s AI detection tools could soon become close to being obsolete.
AI Detector Pro: Specializes in GPT-Generated Texts
Price: Free but comes with a paid version
AI Detector Pro is an AI detection tool designed to detect sentences or paragraphs written by the generated pre-trained transformer (GPT) language model.
It can even spot AI-written content even if ChatGPT didn’t create it.
How? As long as the content was generated by the tools which use GPT tech (like Quillbot), then the platform could quickly identify them.
The language models it can sniff out include GPT-2, GPT-3, GPT-J, and GPT-NEO, enabling it to cast a wider net and catch machine-written words inside content.
But one possible limitation it could have might be the failure to detect content created by other large language models (LLMs), such as Google’s Bard. Moreover, the developers also clarified that it isn’t always 100% accurate in its detection.
But they made an assurance that the platform’s algorithms are continuously being updated to keep up with the growing sophistication of AI content.
Crossplag: AI and Plagiarism Detection In One Place
Prices: Pay-As-You-Go ($9.99, up to 5k words), Bundle ($149.99, up to 100k words), Educational Plan also available.
Crossplag is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that offers AI detection and plagiarism checking to provide individuals and businesses with high standards in content creation.
It also has usage-based pricing, which means that you’ll only pay for the credits that you actually consumed inside the platform.
Individuals, educational institutions, and businesses can leverage its technology to ensure their integrity and maintain ethical standards in a convenient and affordable way. Moreover, it offers a cloud-based plagiarism analysis called ‘Crossplag Report API’ for organizations to add an extra layer of protection to their data.
You can also try Crossplag’s services for free using its ten credits, which you’ll immediately get upon signup.
Tip: Only upload 500 words or less for each detector so you can test them both and prevent the risk of running out of free credits immediately.
Crossplag also uses Google’s advanced RoBERTa language model and OpenAI’s dataset to deliver seamless results when scanning users’ documents. But the platform could face possible limitations as it uses the GPT-2: 1B dataset, which was released way back in 2019.
Content At Scale: AI and Plagiarism Detection (Plus Paid Blog Creation)
Price: Free (For AI detection only)
Content At Scale is a platform that offers three major services: ‘Done-For-You’ blog content creation, AI text detection, and plagiarism scans.
And to bring the best possible results to its users, it analyzes three primary aspects of a text, which are predictability, probability, and pattern.
Moreover, its plagiarism detector leverages the power of Copyscape technology to perform high-quality scans for any unoriginal or copied content.
The platform has also raised concerns about the threat of AI watermarking, which could soon pose risks to AI-generated content, but its ability to deal with this virtual stamp remains unclear. Nonetheless, it remains capable of detecting content created by the latest language generators, such as GPT-3, which sets it apart from other free AI detectors.
Originality.AI: Large-Scale AI and Plagiarism Detection
Originality.AI is a powerful platform that combines artificial intelligence detection and plagiarism checking to offer high-accuracy results. It is ideal for larger teams who are looking for a capable tool that can thoroughly scan AI content and plagiarism with a high accuracy rate.
Its upcoming feature, Full Site Scan, can scan an entire site (instead of only the top pages) to detect AI or plagiarized content, making it perfect for website buyers.
Moreover, it was specifically designed to detect content created by LLMs such as GPT-3, GPT-2, GPT-J, and GPT-NEO. It even claims to achieve 94% success rates in spotting content created by these AIs.
I also love that it provides straightforward verdicts after scanning a text instead of merely saying “likely” or “possibly.” It even highlights specific sentences it considers AI-generated and tells the percentage of machine-written text in the content.
You can also download its Chrome Extension to scan Google Docs for possible plagiarism and AI-generated content.
Join our newsletter as we build a community of AI and web3 pioneers.
The next 3-5 years is when new industry titans will emerge, and we want you to be one of them.
Benefits include:
- Receive updates on the most significant trends
- Receive crucial insights that will help you stay ahead in the tech world
- The chance to be part of our OG community, which will have exclusive membership perks
