ChatGPT has taken center stage in the social stratosphere since its launch in late 2022. Students use it for assignments and term papers. Content writers use it to produce content.
However, as a teacher, you want students to produce assignments through their reasoning and problem-solving ability, not with the help of artificial intelligence.
The same applies to a content creator or lead. You want your writers to produce factual and engaging human-written content.
ChatGPT detectors help you identify content or parts of a text that AI tools like ChatGPT produce.
What is a ChatGPT Detector?
ChatGPT detectors are tools that help you determine if the content was written by a human or by artificial intelligence. Most detectors are simple to use.
You copy and paste the content into a text box on the detector website. You’ll then click the “Check” or “Analyze.” After checking or analyzing, the platform will provide a probability score.
Why is a ChatGPT Detector Important?
With the rampant use of ChatGPT to write assignments, teachers need tools that help them enforce academic integrity.
For bloggers and content publishers, AI-generated content can be outdated and incorrect based on the data the tool was trained on. Many people have started using ChatGPT as a profession.
Ethical concerns also abound about using other people’s work without crediting them. That’s why it’s necessary to use ChatGPT detectors, especially where your policy is actively against generating content with AI.
Recommended ChatGPT Detectors
Below, find four recommended detectors that passed our test and meet our standards.
1. Originality AI: Our Top Choice for Accurate ChatGPT Content Detection
Built by a team of content marketers and AI experts, Originality.AI is perfect for web publishers.
The platform claims its high accuracy is due to investing in high computer power. It’s the only tool on the list not to offer a free version.
Originality AI packs many features that make it handy for more than ChatGPT content checks.
Our rating: 4.8 out of 5
Best for extra features: Originality.Ai boasts lots of features far more than other detectors on this list. For example, it has team management and can scan whole websites. Other tools don’t do that.
Notable Features
Some notable features of Originality AI include:
- Plagiarism checker and paraphrase detection: Comes with a plagiarism checker as well as a tool to catch paraphrased content.
- Team management: Add an unlimited number of team members and assign different levels of access.
- API for AI detection to integrate with existing content creation tools.
Pros
These are some of the reasons we like Originality.AI:
- Highlighting AI Portions: Apart from providing an overall probability score, Originality.AI also highlights the portions of the text that is AI-generated.
- Available in different channels: Originality.AI is available as a Chrome extension. You can scan documents while working on Google Docs.
- Accurate with GPT-4: OpenAI launched GPT-4 in March 2023, and Originality.AI can already detect text created by the new language model.
- Picks up paraphrased content: Paraphrasing is one of the ways people try to outsmart ChatGPT detectors. Originality doesn’t fall for this gimmick.
- Team management: Useful feature for web publishers managing a large team of writers and editors.
Cons
These are the not-so-good facts about the product:
- No free version: Originality.AI offers no free version. Even its free trial is available for $20. So there’s no way to test drive the tool without shedding a few bucks.
- Tailored to web publishers: May not be the best detector for academia.
- Still in beta testing: Some features are not yet active.
Is Originality.AI Hard to Use?
Originality.AI is easy to use. You can copy the text and paste it into the website or Chrome extension window.
Click analyze, and the tool will display two numbers: the percentage of the text that was either human or AI-written.
Pricing & Plans
Originality.AI has a simple pricing plan. You pay $0.01 for every 100 words that you scan. That means You’ll pay $1 if you scan 1,000 words. You can sign up for a free trial with $20.
Our Take
Originality.AI is a comprehensive tool tailor-made for content marketing agencies. The features definitely point to this.
Across the different types of content we tested, the tool was the hardest to fool with paraphrased texts.
I also liked that I could run a detection test in the Google Docs window without switching pages. If you have a content marketing agency or manage a team of writers, this tool can be a valuable asset.
2. GPTZero: Best Detector for Educators
In a test by TechCrunch, GPTZero performed best with a return of five accurate results out of seven tests. It performed better than six other ChatGPT detectors.
A brief perusal of its website shows its primary target audience is educators, schools, and universities.
The company trained its proprietary technology, DeepAnalyse, on over 10 million articles and text.
Our ratings: 4.7
Best solution for educators: Offers a dedicated plan for educators with a “fine-tuned detection model for education.”
Notable Features
Some excellent features of GPTZero include:
- Learning Management System (LMS) integration: Can integrate with many LMS solutions most schools and educators use.
- File batch uploads: Educators can upload files for their entire classroom at once.
- Microsoft Word plugin: You can scan assignments directly inside Microsoft Word.
Pros
Some of the things we like about GPTZero include:
- Highlights areas: GPTZero highlights portions of the content likely to be AI-written.
- Up-to-date: Can detect content written by more recent language models such as GPT-4 and LLAMA.
- Free version: There’s a free version available on the homepage. No need to register to access it.
- Confidence rating: An added layer of transparency to counter false positives and negatives.
- API Integration: There are setup and integration engineers to provide API integration support.
Cons
What we didn’t like about GPTZero include:
- Paraphrased AI content: Cannot identify AI content that has been heavily paraphrased.
- Limited scans: Even on the paid version, there’s a limit on how many words you can scan per month.
- Unclear data: The Perplexity and Burstiness Scores may not be clear to most people.
Is GPTZero Hard to Use?
GPTZero is easy to use, whether you’re scanning documents via the website or Microsoft Word plugin.
After scanning the document, GPTZero provides a verdict: “Your text is likely to be written by a human” or “…by AI.”
The additional scores of Perplexity and Burstiness Score may be confusing for some people, though.
Pricing & Plans
GPTZero has three pricing plans: GPTZero Classic (the free version), GPTZero Educator, and GPTZero Pro.
The free version has a 5,000-character limit for each scan, but you can upload as many as three files per time.
GPTZero Educator costs $9.99 per month. It has a 50,000-character limit per document with unlimited batch uploads. However, users can only scan one million words per month.
GPTZero Pro costs $19.99 for two million words monthly. Users enjoy unlimited batch uploads, but each document must not contain more than 50,000 characters.
Our Take
GPTZero has incredible accuracy (there is no perfect ChatGPT detector) and is trusted by leading organizations such as UNESCO and Purdue University.
I like the confidence rating, which gives me extra data to judge how much to trust the results.
Ultimately, I’d recommend this tool for teachers and schools because of the model trained for student prose.
3. Copyleaks AI Content Detector: Best for scanning multiple languages
Copyleaks prides itself on being a solution for multiple industries and uses, including ed tech, SEO agencies, publishers, media, legal, government ministries, and professionals.
It also has a plagiarism checker that can check written text and code. There’s talk that ChatGPT may replace programmers one day.
For written texts, it can detect duplicated content in over 100 languages and over 20 coding languages.
Our Rating: 4.7
Best For Multiple Languages: You can use Copyleaks to scan for AI content in 13 languages. More languages are also in the offing.
Notable Features
Notable features of Copyleaks AI Content Detector include:
- Free Chrome extension: Detect AI content from the comfort of your Chrome browser.
- LMS integration: You can integrate with other native LMS platforms.
- Detection across multiple languages: Copyleaks can detect AI content in languages other than English, including Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Italian, and more.
Pros
What we like about Copyleaks include:
- Fast: Get the results of every scan within seconds.
- Highlights AI portion: Copyleaks highlights which portions of the text are AI-written and the parts a human wrote.
- Evolving detection: Machine learning to help the tool evolve as AI content generation tools get closer to writing like humans.
- Free and paid versions: Has a free version you can use without creating an account.
- Complete coverage: Can detect content written with many language models, including ChatGPT, GPT-4, GPT-3, Jasper, Google Bard, and more.
Cons
What we didn’t like about Copyleaks include:
- Plagiarism and AI detector don’t work concurrently: You must scan the text using the two tools separately.
- Poor dashboard interface: The user interface could do with a bit of user-friendly update.
- Can’t detect spun content: If a text written with AI passes through a spinner, Copyleaks may likely classify it wrongly.
Is Copyleaks AI Content Detector Hard to Use?
Simple to use, and you’ll get your results in double quick time.
The result is also easy to analyze. You’ll get a “This is human text” or an “AI Content Detected” output.
When you hover over the highlighted text, you’ll see a probability like “80% probability for AI.”
Pricing and Plans
The Copyleaks AI Content Detector is free for existing subscribers of Copyleaks products.
Scanning 100 pages per month is billed monthly at $10.99 and annually at $9.16. One page is the equivalent of 250 pages. So, this subscription will get you 25,000 words.
If you need to scan more than 120,000 pages monthly, you’ll need to contact Copyleaks’ sales team for a custom plan.
Our Take
It’s valuable that you can scan for AI content in 12 languages other than English, with more to come. For educators teaching subjects in multiple languages, this is invaluable.
There’s no need to register to use the free version of the product. Unlike some competitors, the free version provides a healthy character limit.
4. OpenAI’s AI Text Classifier: Best free detector (Bonus Entry)
Built by the team at OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. In the company’s words, “We’re launching a classifier trained to distinguish between AI-written and human-written text.”
It’s important to note that this new iteration is an upgrade on its previous classifier. The results from the new classifier are more reliable.
Our Rating: 4.5
Best budget option: Free with no limits
Notable Features
Significant features of Copyleaks AI Content Detector include:
- Free: Free, but you need to create an account to use.
- No character limits: There are no limits to the number of characters or words you can scan. As a matter of fact, OpenAI recommends scanning at least 1,000 characters (250 words) for more reliable results.
Pros
What we like about OpenAI’s AI Classifier include:
- Simple output: Classifies texts into one of five groups – “Very unlikely to be AI-generated,” “Unlikely to be AI-generated,” “Unclear if it is AI written,” “Possibly AI-generated,” and “Likely AI-generated.”
- Developed by OpenAI: Made by a team with a proven track record.
- Check unlimited words: No limits to what you can check.
Cons
What we didn’t like about OpenAI’s AI Text Classifier include:
- Only works with English text: OpenAI notes that the classifier is unreliable for other languages and useless for detecting AI-generated code.
- Grossly unreliable for text with less than 1,000 characters.
- No extension or API integration: The tool is unavailable as a Chrome extension, and there’s currently no API to integrate the classifier with custom solutions.
Is OpenAI’s AI Text Classifier Hard to Use?
Like most ChatGPT detectors, OpenAI is straightforward to use. Copy and paste your text into the box and click submit.
There’s, however, no way to upload multiple documents at once. The text is also classified into one of five easy-to-understand categories.
Pricing & Plans
OpenAI’s AI Text Classifier has no pricing or tiers. It’s currently free, which may change when OpenAI sees it as a viable product.
Our Take
While OpenAI’s AI Text Classifier doesn’t have as many features as the other tools presented in this review, we still thought it pertinent to include it.
The company’s product, ChatGPT, is at the center of the need for detectors in the first place. With promises of future upgrades, it’s one to monitor.
Features to Look for In ChatGPT Detectors
Detecting AI-generated content is not an exact science. That’s why the reports from ChatGPT detectors come as a percentage probability or with words such as likely and unlikely.
There’ll also always be false negatives and positives. That is, content classified as AI-written that isn’t, and text classified as human-written but not.
How often these tools get it right depends on two key features, including:
1. Quality and expansiveness of data the model was trained on
OpenAI noted that inputs that significantly differ from the text the classifier was trained on cause the tool to sometimes be overconfident in a wrong prediction.
The text the model is trained on should cover a broad range of topics and writing types. Failure to do so will increase false positives like qualifying text by non-native English writers as AI-written. That’s another way ChatGPT can be harmful.
2. Constant Improvement
Language models that generate AI content are improving. Companies are releasing newer, improved models. As such, the capability of these tools to generate text closer to human quality increases with each iteration.
Tools that do not improve fast enough at the speed of innovation in the AI space will become obsolete quickly.
3. Other factors
Other factors you can consider include ease of use and additional features. On the former, most detectors are easy to use.
Only a few, however, have additional features like Chrome extension and Microsoft Word plugins. Tools with additional features show that the platform is not merely using an API to access a detection model from a third party.
Frequently Asked Questions
We’ve answered popular ChatGPT detector questions below.
Can Google Detect ChatGPT Content?
There’s sufficient evidence that Google can detect text generated by language models. Google has, however, noted that it’ll only penalize AI-generated content that is created solely for ranking purposes. That is content that does not provide any value. The search engine developer will classify such content as spam.
How Can Teachers Detect ChatGPT Text?
Teachers can detect ChatGPT text with AI content detectors like Originality.AI, GPTZero, and Copyleaks.AI. GPTZero has a model specifically trained on student prose.
However, know that the results from these tools are not 100% certain. As such, these tools should be used in conjunction with other strategies.
Wrapping Up
In the booming AI content generation landscape, ChatGPT detectors have become increasingly important. Three of the best detectors include Originality.AI, GPTZero, and Copyleaks.AI.
Originality.AI is our top choice over the other two because it accurately predicted 4 out of 5 AI-written texts (with different degrees of tweaks). The others correctly predicted three texts.
Originality.AI was trained on quality, expansive data. It also undergoes constant evolution to match the language model improvements.
With its additional features, such as team management and picking up paraphrased content, Originality.AI makes it easy to detect AI-generated texts.
