How Does AI Detection Work & How to Bypass AI Detectors?

ChatGPT has become a game-changer in content creation, with thousands using it to write essays, articles, and research papers. However, as some people apply chatbots unethically, the demand for AI content detection has skyrocketed. 

A myriad of AI detectors—also called AI checkers or ChatGPT finders—have entered the market, promising to spot AI-generated content accurately. 

Unfortunately, this technology is still poorly understood: 

• How does AI detection work? 

• Are these tools as accurate as their creators claim? 

• Is it really possible to bypass AI detectors? 

Read on to learn more about AI detection technology and discover some tips for bypassing it. 

How Do AI Detectors Work?  

The general principle of AI content detection is the search for patterns and structures typical for ChatGPT and similar content generators. These usually include a lack of natural flow, predictable word choices, and repetition of cliché words that looks mechanical. All these red flags boil down to two indicators of human writing — perplexity and burstiness — discussed below.  

Perplexity  

In simple terms, perplexity is a degree of the text’s unpredictability. While readability requires some predictability, people still often make unusual word choices and sentence structures depending on their personal writing styles. AI tools make only safe choices and rely on the most statistically probable words, which reduces content perplexity to a minimum.  

Here is an example to illustrate the difference.  

🤖 LOW PERPLEXITY (high likelihood of AI content)  

• Starting an art blog is a great way to showcase your work, share your insights, and connect with a creative audience. 

• Choosing the right HR outsourcing provider can save time, reduce risks, and improve employee management for a small business in Canada. 

✍️ HIGH PERPLEXITY (high likelihood of human-written content)  

• What can be a better way to showcase your artwork and share your unique experiences and insights than to launch an art blog?  

• By outsourcing your HR tasks to an external firm, you can get way better results across several dimensions, including but not limited to risk reduction and more effective employee management.  

As you can see, the phrases in the first case look logical and fully readable but are rather impersonal and robotic. The meaning remains the same in the second case, but the text feels more natural and varied. 

Burstiness  

Another vital parameter for identifying human writing is the text’s level of burstiness. While perplexity is more related to word choices in the sentence, burstiness refers to sentence length and structure variations. Humans typically write with versatile syntax, mixing short and long sentences, while AI tends to maintain a more uniform style. 

Two paragraphs below illustrate the difference between AI and human texts regarding content burstiness.   

🤖 LOW BURSTINESS (high likelihood of AI content) 

A distinctive feature of 17th-century landscape painting was the influence of patronage and market demand on painting styles. The Dutch Republic had a growing middle class that commissioned landscapes as decorative works. Unlike Italy and Spain, where religious and historical paintings dominated, landscapes in the Netherlands became highly sought after as standalone genres. 

✍️ HIGH BURSTINESS (high likelihood of human-written content)  

When we talk about the development of 17th-century landscape painting, it’s vital to factor demand and patronage in the evolution of this style. For example, the markets of Italy and Spain favored religious and historical themes. But what about the Dutch Republic? Things were different there. The growing middle class shaped demand and painting styles. This way, painters were often commissioned for decorative pieces, and the nation contributed to the development of landscape painting as a standalone genre.   

The second passage sounds more dynamic thanks to its varied sentence structures. 

Famous AI Checkers  

Though the market is crowded with various free and paid AI detector tools, some of them stand out in terms of popularity and reported accuracy. Here are a couple of tried and tested checker products that customers praise for effectiveness.  

GLTR  

The GLTR checker is one of the pioneers in the market of AI content detection. This easy-to-use instrument relies on the perplexity parameter and represents a simple, workable algorithm that works just like just like GPT-based models. It highlights words based on their likelihood of being AI-generated, helping users spot artificial patterns. 

GPTZero  

This checker is marketed as a more advanced and sensitive product, which relies on both perplexity and burstiness. This tool comes with free usage limits; one can check up to 10,000 words per month for free, and the monthly subscription costs $8. However, its creators claim that GPTZero can detect the output of ChatGPT, Google Gemini, LLaMa, and newer AI models.  

How Accurate Are AI Detectors?  

Every user is naturally interested in the proven degree of accuracy of the AI checker tool. There is no definitive answer to this question because language models are evolving really fast, and so are detectors. Given such a fast pace of progress, checkers may still be one step behind AI, as their detection techniques are usually designed in response to emerging AI tools.  

That’s why you shouldn’t expect AI checkers to be 100% accurate. If your detector gives a result in the form of a degree of likelihood, not an exact verdict, it’s better than a promise of 100% precision. This approach is more honest and realistic, as many detectors issue false positives on well-written, academically polished texts without unusual twists or creative style). Have a look at the example of how this happens.  

How to Bypass AI Detectors? My Lifehack  

If you’ve generated a portion of text for an essay or research paper with the help of some GPT-based tool, you need to humanize it to avoid reputational problems. My personal life hack is the AI content humanizer by IvyPanda – a great free online resource without subscriptions and content volume limitations. Its benefits include:  

• 100% online availability without registration or subscription.  

• Unlimited rounds of content processing.  

• High speed of AI content humanization.  

• Wide range of changes for AI-typical content parts, including cliches, repetitive phrases, and unnatural sentence elements.  

I've recently published a review article about this tool, explaining its features and testing it on real content. So, I believe IvyPanda’s humanizer can do a great job of turning your AI output into more human-like content. The text needs human fine-tuning even after the humanizer’s work, but it’s still a very helpful intermediate step in content creation.   

Balance Is Key  

As you can see, it’s possible to bypass AI detection, even when relying heavily on GPT technology. However, the best strategy for submitting original content is to balance your personal touch with AI tools. Adding individual stylistic elements and insights to your content will significantly improve your results in AI detectors.