A new tool has been launched to detect AI-generated text – in what could be a huge setback for students looking to cut corners.
In a boost for teachers and employers, the start-up that created ChatGPT – OpenAI – now offers a way of determining content produced using artificial intelligence.
Announcing the news in a blog post, the platform said the AI Text Classifier will categorise text on a five-step scale – raging from likely to very unlikely.
OpenAI said the tool is a “fine-tuned GPT model that predicts how likely it is that a piece of text was generated by AI from a variety of sources”.
It said: “We’re making this classifier publicly available to get feedback on whether imperfect tools like this one are useful.
“We recognise that identifying AI-written text has been an important point of discussion among educators, and equally important is recognising the limits and impacts of AI generated text classifiers in the classroom.”
In its public beta mode, OpenAI acknowledges the detection tool is very unreliable on texts under 1,000 characters – about 150 to 250 words.
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ChatGPT was launched in late 2022 and has taken the internet by storm.
It can generate realistic responses using a large language model which allows it to generate human-like text in response to a given prompt – including articles, essays, jokes and even poetry.
Since its debut in November, it has raised concerns about copyright and plagiarism – amassing more than one million users less than a week after its public launch.