7 Ways to Spot AI Writing
/Here are some tips for determining if an article is likely written by AI.
73. OVERUSED WORDS. AI-written articles tend to come back to the same terms multiple times. Examples would be comprehensive, delve, meticulous, versatile and pivotal. Before 2024, overused AI words in scientific research papers were typically nouns. More recently, researchers say AI excessively uses "style" words—mostly verbs and some adjectives.
74. TORTURED ACRONYMS. Generative AI will sometimes pick up the wrong words for an acronym. For instance, a data science paper might use "CNN" to refer to "convolutional brain organization" instead of "convolutional neural network.”
75. NONSENSICAL PARAPHRASES. An academic paper written by AI might have “glucose bigotry” instead of “glucose intolerance,” where it changed a single word and did not recognize the context.
76. ACADEMIC CITATIONS. AI-written articles with academic citations have been known to include incorrect or incomplete references.
77. STYLE CHANGES. A sudden change in writing style within an article or essay may indicate that the author’s work was rewritten using AI.
78. PERFECT GRAMMAR. A typo, particularly in student writing, could indicate the article or essay is not wholly the work of a bot. Mistake-free writing is, ironically, a red flag. However, savvy writing prompts may ask the AI to include some errors in order to mislead inspectors.
80. MECHANICAL STYLING. AI tends to mechanically repeat expressions that appear often in the internet material that it was trained on. The result is often uninspired and generic prose that often lacks any specific point.