Honorio Penadés

Can AI really detect AI? Currently, universities, journals, and various educational institutions are using AI detectors to identify AI-generated writing. However, a recently published study has challenged this widely held assumption. In a study titled "AI Detecting AI in Academic Writing: Why Most AI Detector Findings Are False," published in Elsevier's Elsevier journal Next Research, researchers argue that most results produced by current AI detectors are not reliable and can often lead to incorrect conclusions. The reason is that modern Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, have become so advanced that even experts often find it difficult to accurately distinguish between human-written and AI-generated text. Nevertheless, many institutions are treating AI detector reports as if they were definitive evidence. The study also shows that AI detectors frequently misclassify human-written content as AI-generated. One of the study's most important findings is that when the actual prevalence of AI-generated writing is low, the false-positive rate of AI detectors increases dramatically. In other words, if AI use is relatively limited in practice, an innocent author may face a much higher risk of being wrongly accused of using AI. The researchers further note that authors who do use AI can often evade detection simply by modifying, editing, or rewriting portions of the generated text. This means that a writer who never used AI may still be accused of doing so, while someone who did use AI may not be detected at all. According to the researchers, AI detector results should not be used as the sole or definitive evidence of AI usage.