The 11 Best AI Content Detection Tools To Use In 2023
In the ever-evolving world of online marketing, Artificial Intelligence has become a game changer that has allowed bloggers and webmasters to produce high-quality content within minutes.
But as AI-generated content becomes increasingly indistinguishable from human writing, the need for reliable AI Content Detection Tools has never been more critical.
With the constant demand for fresh content and fierce competition for keywords, brands are continually looking for ways to streamline their content production process. This often leads to the use of AI writing tools, which can blur the lines between human and AI-authored content. But, can search engines detect AI-generated articles? And how can you ensure your content's authenticity without sacrificing quality?
Enter the world of AI Content Detectors - tools that help you gauge the "human-like" aspect of your AI-generated content and determine necessary edits before publishing. In this comprehensive guide, we'll unveil the best AI Content Detection Tools of 2023, ranging from free options to premium services.
Can Google detect AI content?
Google has said that it can detect AI content and is putting more and more resources into being able to tell whether the content it crawls has been written by a human or a robot.
They can do this in a variety of ways, such as:
- Looking at whether the structure of the text is repetitive, with similar phrases and words being used multiple times
- Making sure the grammar and syntax are correct, and whether they lack the natural variation and complexity usually found in human-written content
- Checking if the text may have a high degree of coherence, but lack the general nuance and context found in human-written text
The key thing to remember though, is that Google will not necessarily penalise a website for publishing AI-generated content.
Officially, Google has given this guidance on what they deem to be “‘spammy automatically generated content”:
Spammy automatically generated (or "auto-generated") content is content that's been generated programmatically without producing anything original or adding sufficient value; instead, it's been generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users. Examples of spammy auto-generated content include:
- Text that makes no sense to the reader but contains search keywords
- Text translated by an automated tool without human review or curation before publishing
- Text generated through automated processes without regard for quality or user experience
- Text generated using automated synonymizing, paraphrasing, or obfuscation techniques
- Text generated from scraping feeds or search results
- Stitching or combining content from different web pages without adding sufficient value
So it’s not that Google is actively looking to penalise all AI content, just the thin, spammy and unoriginal content that adds no value to users.
How do AI detectors work?
Each AI detection tool is unique, employing its methodology to tackle the challenge. Generally, ChatGPT detection tools evaluate content by assessing the predictability of phrase selections within a piece of writing.
In essence, the probability of content being classified as AI-generated or human-written hinges on whether the detection software perceives the writing as following a pattern typical of AI content generation.
This process revolves around two primary concepts:
- Burstiness: A consistent length and rhythm in sentence construction
- Perplexity: An element of randomness in word choice within a sentence or group of sentences
For instance, in an essay discussing America's founding, it is highly improbable that generative AI would include a random anecdote about someone's children to add context, so an AI detection tool would likely regard that as human writing.
As ChatGPT detectors emerged to identify AI-generated writing, counter-tools have been developed to bypass detection. These counter-tools, such as Undetectable or Quillbot, can rewrite content to make it more challenging for AI detection tools to recognize.
There are also certain prompts you can use that encourage ChatGPT and other AI writing tools to produce content that appears "more human" on the AI-to-human scale. These prompts define burstiness and perplexity, instructing ChatGPT to write with increased levels of both qualities.
How reliable are AI content detection tools?
Although AI detection tools are improving all the time, they are still far from infallible.
When inputting the same paragraph into every AI detector on this list, the results can vary significantly – suggesting that the technology has not yet reached a level of complete reliability and consistency.
Given the ever-changing landscape of Google and AI writing tools like ChatGPT, it's nearly impossible for existing AI detectors to identify every instance of AI-generated content.
For this reason, we strongly recommend always, without exception, having a human editor review any content before publication. Human eyes possess the ability to spot nuances that machines may miss, and they play a crucial role in ensuring that AI-written content maintains a genuine human touch.
The best AI content detection tools
Originality.ai
Originality.ai scored highly in our tests – so it’s no surprise it describes itself as “the most accurate AI content detector and plagiarism checker built for serious content publishers.”
This is a paid tool which charges $0.01 per credit, for which you get to scan 100 words. So to check a 2000 word blog post it will cost you $2.00.
As well as an AI scanner, Originality.ai also has a plagiarism checker which helps it to identify more AI-generated content as most AI writers scrape content direct from other sources on the internet.
It can efficiently detect content generated by various GPT models, including GPT 2, GPT-3, GPT 3.5, GPT Neo, GPT-J, and ChatGPT technologies.
It also has a Chrome extension so you can use it to detect AI content directly in the browser.
Writer
The Writer AI Content Detector is a very easy-to-use tool that forms part of Writer’s overall AI offering.
It’s designed to help users check their content and make sure it doesn’t read like it was entirely written by AI.
The detector is free to use up to 1,500 words and to get started you just simply paste your content in its editor box or specify the URL where the text should be fetched from.
It will then detect the percentage of the content generated by a human writer and displays it on the right panel.
Content at Scale's AI Detector
Content at Scale is an AI content generation tool which also has an AI Detector that can help you identify AI-generated content and check your own content.
You don’t need to sign up with a free account to use the tool, all you need to do is paste your content into the editor window and it will identify the percentage of real or plagiarised content.
It will also display the ‘Human Content Score’ along with a final judgement on whether the content is majorly written by an AI or a human. It allows you to check up to 25k characters at a time – so you can check anywhere between 3500 and 6200 words for free each time.
Sapling AI Detector
Sapling AI Detector offers both free and paid versions as well as a Chrome Extension and an API. It produces an overall score and sentence highlighting to help you work through your copy and identify where the issues are with it.
Corrector AI Content Detector
Corrector App is a grammar checking tool that also features a very simple and effortless AI Content Detector.
The detector uses NLP algorithms and deep learning models to identify patterns and successfully detect GPT-2 and GPT-3 content.
GPTZero
GPTZero has both free and paid options, with the free version providing a score along with some pre-loaded examples.
The paid version also comes with a plagiarism checker, highlighting AI content and the ability to bulk upload multiple pieces of content – mostly designed for the education sector, like a lot of tools on this list.
Copyleaks AI Content Detector
Copyleaks is a popular AI Content Detector that uses AI to detect content generated by AI writing tools, bots and even ChatGPT.
To use the tool you need to create a free trial account on Copyleaks. You then have several options to add content to check – via file upload, paste as plain text or enter a URL. You can also specify a range of different parameters before analysing your content,
It is a highly advanced tool that offers you multiple ways to add content. You can upload your file, paste it as plain text, or enter a URL. It also has a separate plagiarism checker and there’s a Chrome extension for checking AI content directly in the browser.
OpenAI's AI Text Classifier
The OpenAI AI Text Classifier is a free tool from the company that created GPT (which is what runs many generative AI writing tools) and of course, ChatGPT.
You may think that the company behind the most popular AI tools would also have the most accurate AI content detector – but that was not the case with our test!
It’s still a robust tool for quickly checking the probability that your content was written by AI, which it rates using the following classifiers: Very unlikely, Unlikely, Unclear if it is, Possibly, or Likely.
Crossplag AI Content Detector
Crossplag is a popular plagiarism detection that uses a combination of advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning techniques to detect similarities in content.
You need to sign up on their platform first, and then you can paste the content you need to be checked. It provides an AI Content Index which displays the percentage likelihood of AI-generated text.
ChatGPT Detector on Hugging Face
This is a free AI content detector that provides an overall prediction and score to any text you upload.
Hugging Face is an open-source AI community where people can share ideas, and it also has a free AI detection tool.
Results from the tool get more accurate the more content the tool is given, so it might be better for those who are testing long form AI-written content.
Kazan SEO
Kazan SEO is primarily a content optimisation tool, but it can also be used as an AI Content Detector which can easily identify content generated by GPT3.
The tool is free to use if you sign up for an account, along with all the other tools Kazan has to offer – which include an AI content generator, a tool for discovering and researching new target keywords, a URL text extraction tool for SEO analysis, and a co-relational content optimisation tool.
About the Author
Luke Glassford is an SEO expert with over 15 years’ experience.
During his time working in SEO, Luke has set-up an SEO agency, worked as an in-house SEO for a major national company and managed his own successful SEO consultancy - using a lot of different SEO tools along the way!
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