AI Detection: What It Is, How It Works, Top Tools to Know

While AI detection has been heralded by many as one way to mitigate the harms of AI-fueled misinformation and fraud, it is still a relatively new field, so results aren’t always accurate. These tools might not catch every instance of AI-generated material, and may produce false positives.

Accuracy rates for AI detection tools can be as high as 98 percent and as low as 50 percent, according to one paper published by researchers at the University of Chicago’s Department of Computer Science.

Because of how AI detectors work, they can never guarantee 100 percent accuracy. Factors like training data quality and the type of content being analyzed can significantly influence the performance of a given AI detection tool. 

Both mistakes carry significant risks. If content created by a human is falsely flagged as AI-generated, it can seriously damage a person’s reputation and career, causing them to get kicked out of school or lose work opportunities. And if a tool mistakes AI-generated material as real, it can go completely unchecked, potentially allowing misleading or otherwise harmful information to spread.

“You cannot completely rely on these tools, especially for sensitive applications,” Vinu Sankar Sadasivan, a computer science Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, told Built In. He has co-authored several papers highlighting the inaccuracies of AI detectors. “We should be really careful when deploying them in practice,” he said.

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