As artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and others continue to learn and grow, they become more sophisticated and more adept at churning out clear, concise, “human-like” content. But what does that mean for content creators and website owners?
In the same way that AI has changed the way content is outlined and crafted, so too does it have the potential to look at that content for tell-tale signs and hints that the content wasn’t created by a human. As such, the race is on to develop a comprehensive AI that not only looks at and analyzes its own content but can accurately determine the originality of that content with a high degree of accuracy.
In order to better understand how AI plagiarism checkers work, it’s important to first take a step back and understand all of the nuances that make up the blanket definition of “plagiarism”. You see, plagiarism can be copying text verbatim, or simply citing an idea, with various degrees of severity in between. Not only can it reflect poorly on the content creator and the company they write for, but at its worst, it can be cause for dismissal or legal action.
Therefore, an AI plagiarism checker has to be astute enough to detect these nuances in speech and compare the style of writing to something more conversational and human-like. It’s a tall order to fill, and until now, most plagiarism checkers have operated solely on the basis of word matching.
Essentially, these old (and outdated) tools work by looking at strings of words to determine whether that same string of words appears in some other text. Artificial intelligence has made checking for plagiarism a much deeper and more thorough process. Rather than comparing strings of text, the AI looks at your style of writing: your syntax, rhythm, patterns, and tone, and compares it with other content that exists on the web about that same topic while deciding to what degree your version matches what’s already out there.
This is why you’ll often see reports in Originality.AI that come back as “51% AI-generated” vs. “49% human”. It’s not pointing a finger of blame at you and saying “you plagiarized this”, but it is telling you that based on all of the aforementioned factors, your text appears machine-written. This is more likely to occur with complex and technical pieces as these types of content often use advanced terminology and concepts that simply cannot be easily explained or referenced in any other way.
Having a world of information at one’s fingertips can be both a blessing and a curse when it comes to creating content. On one hand, you have a veritable treasure trove of studies, statistics, research, and insights to pull from and inspire you. On the other hand, you have a veritable treasure trove of studies, statistics, research, and insights to inspire you – to the point where you may throw your hands up in dismay exclaiming that “there is nothing new under the sun!”
It’s important not to let the breadth and depth of original content out there dissuade you from creating your own. Just be careful of falling into the trap of unintentional plagiarism – wherein you take an idea or concept from elsewhere and reshape it in your own words. Give credit to the original author and then expand on their idea or take that idea in a different direction.
There are countless opportunities to create your own path and as a result, build up your credibility and authenticity as a content creator. If you’re writing on behalf of an agency, it also helps give more authority to what they share as well, positioning you both as thought leaders in your space.
AI technology has advanced by leaps and bounds in just a few short years. Some growing pains are to be expected. But these tools are learning and understanding more all the time. In the early days of using AI to check for plagiarism, some reports would come back as “false positives” or would even say a piece was free and clear of plagiarism when it clearly took entire blocks of text from elsewhere.
Fortunately, many of the kinks and technical hiccups have been worked out. As AI writing tools continue to trawl more of the web and get input from content creators and publishers around the world, you can expect that they’ll become more fluid and conversational, just as a human writer would.
So too will AI plagiarism checkers like Originality.AI continue to refine their algorithms and knowledge and evolve a more acute awareness of what constitutes plagiarism and what is original content.
The bottom line is that as both types of tools continue to grow at a breakneck pace, you can expect that it will become harder and harder to try and “outsmart the AI” by changing a few words here and there. These tools are ingesting content and pulling out remarkable findings from it – things that can’t easily be covered up with a few clever changes of phrasing. That means now, more than ever, content creators need to step up their game, become true experts in their chosen niches and embrace AI as the tool that it is, rather than looking at it with skepticism, or worse, outright dread.
More and more marketing agencies, website buyers, and other professionals are relying on tools like Originality.AI to determine the quality and authenticity of their content. Great content that passes the text is not only good for the writer and the company but good for the search engines and the web as a whole. Quality, not quantity, is nothing less than a hallmark of Originality.