AI Content Detector False Positives – Accused Of Using Chat GPT Or Other AI?

Even our own AI detector is not perfect, and it can produce false positives. These false positives can be very painful for anyone who creates original content. Whether you are a student who has been wrongly accused of using ChatGPT by TurnItIn or GPTZero or a writer who has received a false positive with Originality.ai, this article is meant to help. 

Discover how AI detection works, the accuracy rates, what to do if you have been wrongly accused, and tips on how to avoid it in the future.

This article provides a brief overview of common questions about AI content detector false positives that may help if you have been accused of using AI. For a deeper discussion on each topic, view the recommended reading links within the sections.

What Do You Do if Falsely Accused — As a Student

If you truly created (without AI involvement) a piece of text and you are being accused of having created it with AI, here are steps you can take.

1. Try different AI detector models. Our AI detector provides multiple models depending on your organizations policy
2. Take your time — A knee-jerk reaction can often make the situation worse. Take the time you need to respond in an intelligent way.
3. Collect relevant information
4. Review your school’s academic integrity policy as it relates to the use of AI.
5. Collect any working notes, revision history, etc., that demonstrate you put a lot of effort into the work.
6. Ideally, you created the text in a Google Document, and you can use the Originality.ai Free Chrome extension to show the document’s entire creation process.
7. Find relevant content showing the detection accuracy and false positive occurrences of tools.
8. Check your previously submitted work to show your current work is similar to previously submitted work.
9. Have empathy for your professor — they need to maintain the academic integrity of their institution in the face of a wave of students using AI to cheat, and the tools they have to fight it are imperfect.
10. Send a polite response to your teacher — communicate the information you have compiled in a polite/respectful way that you are confident this is a case of a false positive.
11. Escalate the issue to your institution’s administration if not resolved with your teacher.

What Do You Do if Falsely Accused — As a Writer

If you are a writer and you have been falsely accused of having AI create content, you can:

1. Try different AI detector models. Our AI detector provides multiple models depending on your organizations policy
2. Gather relevant information
3. Review whether your writing agreement stated that AI was not permitted.
4. Determine if a certain AI detection score and tool was agreed to (not a recommended way to manage the misuse of AI).
5. Find previously submitted or similar work and run it through an AI detector.
6. Provide research and guidance on how to handle AI detection scores (see AI Detection Accuracy and How to Use AI Detection Scores for more information).
7. Share the relevant information with whoever is accusing you incorrectly of using AI (if you can share the information, it should help resolve issues with false positives).
8. Demonstrate your other similar work was original.
9. Show the creation process (using our free ChatGPT detector Chrome extension) of both your previous content and the content in question.
10. Share research (AI detection accuracy & recommendations on how to use AI detection scores).

How to Avoid False Positives

Here are tips to help prevent and resolve false positives.

1. A detection score of 60% Original and 40% AI is not a false positive. It correctly predicted with 60% confidence that your content was Original. The meaning of the score is not that 60% was Original and 40% was AI; it means it is 60% confident that the content is original.
2. Create all articles in Google Docs (whenever possible) so that you can use our free Chrome Extension to help you PROVE your content is Original.
3. Editing AI-written content is not a false positive; it is a true positive.
4. Having AI edit your work is not a false positive; it is a true positive.
5. When any amount of AI touches the content, it can cause the entire article to be flagged as AI.
6. "Cyborg" writing, where a lot of AI tools are used to create an outline, suggest edits, and optimize the content, can increase the chance of a higher AI score.
7. For this reason, we created a free content optimizer tool similar to SurferSEO or MarketMuse but 100% free that does not use AI to reduce the chance of a false positive occurring.
8. Strange formatting can reduce the accuracy of the detector tools, causing an increase in false positives or false negatives.
9. The shorter the text, the less accurate the detection score. We recommend at least 100 words be checked.

"False positives in AI detection are a BIG deal and will not go away with the use of generative." AI continues to climb. Our hope is that this article will help people understand the limitations of detection tools and share strategies on their appropriate use and how to prove your work's Originality.

What Is AI Content Detection?

An AI content detector is an artificial intelligence trained to tell the increasingly subtle difference between AI-generated and human-generated text.

• How does our AI Detector Work?

Most Common Misunderstanding:

A detection score of 60% AI and 40% Original should be read as “there is a 60% chance that the content was AI-generated,” and NOT that 60% of the article is AI-generated and 40% is Original.

• What AI Detection Scores Mean

A score of 60% Original and 40% AI, if you know the content was 100% created by you, is not a false positive. It correctly identified the content as Original.

How Accurate Are AI Detectors?

AI Detectors are NOT 100% accurate and never will be. We have done extensive testing on Originality.ai’s accuracy rate, and it varies based on which Generative AI tool and large language model (LLM) is used to create the content. 

With our latest model, Lite 1.0.0, released in July 2024, the accuracy is 98% with a 1% false positive rate. Lite also permits light AI editing such as Grammarly’s spelling and grammar tools, which makes it an excellent choice for web publishers, marketers, and education professionals.

In October 2024, we released an updated Turbo model with 99%+ accuracy and an under 3% false positive rate. It's a fantastic choice if you have a 0 tolerancy policy for AI use.

For further information, see the complete AI Detection Accuracy Study. 

Then, review a meta-analysis of eight third-party studies that demonstrate Originality.ai’s exceptional AI detection.

Try our AI content checker here.

See our complete AI detector accuracy tests here.

Originality.ai Detection Accuracy on GPT-4

A quick overview showing Originality.ai’s accuracy on GPT-4 in comparison to other AI detection tools (note this was completed with a previous model).

We used a confusion matrix to test the accuracy of an AI detector against a set of AI-generated and human-written text.

• True Positive – AI detector correctly identified content as AI.
• False Negative – AI detector incorrectly identified AI content as Human.
• False Positive – AI detector incorrectly identified human content as AI.
• True Negative – AI detector correctly identified human content as human.

Below are the results of a study comparing the Accuracy and False Positives of Originality.ai vs Other AI Detectors

Are AI Detectors Easy to Trick?

Many existing AI detectors have a very easy way to trick them. Simply swapping out some words using a paraphrasing tool like Quillbot results in the ability to bypass detection — except for Originality.ai. Originality.ai can detect whether the content is AI, original, or paraphrased.

• AI Detection Accuracy
• Can you make AI writing undetectable?
• Detecting when Paraphrasing Tools, like Quillbot, Have been Used

What Is and Is Not a False Positive?

A false positive is when an AI detector incorrectly identifies human-created content as being likely generated by an AI.

There is often some misunderstanding when it comes to false positives. For clarity, here is how Originality.ai aims to identify AI vs Original content under different content creation scenarios…

• AI-Generated and Not Edited = AI-Generated Text
• AI-Generated and Human Edited = AI-Generated Text
• Human Written and Heavily AI Edited = AI-Generated Text
• AI Outline*, Human Written, and Heavily AI Edited = AI-Generated Text
• Human Written and Lightly Edited with AI = Results vary depending on level of editing done by AI
• AI Research and Human Written = Original Human-Generated
• Human Written and Human Edited = Original Human-Generated

*AI Outline is defined as using AI (an LLM) to create a content idea, do some research, and/or create an outline. The level at which AI is used during this process may vary and could potentially affect the likelihood the text is detected as AI or human

So if the content was outlined by an AI, then some of the content was written by a human and finally edited/expanded on by an AI; Originality.ai aims to identify this as AI-generated. This is not a false positive.

Similarly and more obviously, if ChatGPT creates a piece of content and then someone painstakingly edits it, but it still gets identified as AI-generated — this is not a false positive.

Should AI Editing Be Treated As AI or Original?

This is a tricky question and one that is still being debated as the use of AI continues to increase. The launch of our Lite 1.0.0 model permits light AI editing such as using popular tools like Grammarly’s spelling and grammar suggestions while editing. 

Overall, it’s best to maintain transparency when using AI, whether it’s for content outlines or editing.

How Should AI Detectors Be Used?

So, in a world where the rate of false positives isn’t (nor will ever be) 0%, how should AI detectors be used?

AI detection does not provide a proveable output for each piece of text — meaning no AI detector can say with proveable certainty that this is how we KNOW that your content was created with AI.

Therefore, it is best…

1. Not to have a HARD rule that every piece of content MUST meet a certain threshold.
2. Look at a series of articles from the same writer to identify writers that are likely using AI vs. those that are not.

Many Originality.ai customers using this strategy have been able to successfully identify writers who were using AI (even though they had been asked not to). Additionally, the Originality.ai customers using this approach were confident they could safely ignore a suspected false positive.

Read case studies of how customers have found success with Originality.ai.

However, for academic disciplinary action, AI detection scores alone are simply not enough.

• How to Think About AI Detection Scores

If Detection Scores Aren’t Perfect — Why Bother With Detection Tools At All?

Some might question if it is responsible to have an AI detection tool if it is not perfect. At Originality.ai, we are confident in the detection rates of our tests and the additional steps we have taken to try and reduce/manage “False positives, including the free tools we offer.”

In a world where AI content is allowed to run wild unchecked, the impact on many of us would be significant. 

• For Web Publishers — If you are concerned about staying on the right side of Google’s guidance with AI-generated content “Using automation—including AI—to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies,” then using AI detectors can help protect your site.
• If you are happy to publish AI-generated content, then you don’t need AI detectors or expensive writers.
• For Content Marketing Agencies — If AI detectors are not used, it makes it challenging to communicate with clients who are asking for proof that the content is not AI-generated.
• For Writers — If AI detectors are not used, then you could be competing against an army of ChatGPT users while struggling to prove your content’s worth.
• For Academia (Students/Professors/Educational Institutions) — If AI is allowed to be used unchecked, it negatively impacts the degree’s value.

ChatGPT and other AI tools like HuggingChat are here — there is no going back. Everyone involved with writing needs to adapt to this new world. 

Multiple Examples of Students Being Falsely Accused of Using AI

The rise of ChatGPT and AI detectors has led to some unfortunate situations in academia.

Here are some examples:

1. “My professor falsely accused me of using chatgpt to write my essay.” (Reddit post) 
2. “My teacher has falsely accused me of using ChatGPT to use an assignment.” (Reddit post)

To be clear… at Originality.ai we don’t believe that an AI detection score alone is enough for disciplinary action. If a report indicates the potential use of AI, always review the content carefully and on a case-by-case basis.