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v2026.1714 entries · CC-BY 4.0
CASRAI
Dictionary termTrack AStablev2026.2

Detection tool (AI-generated)

A software system that estimates the probability that a given piece of content (text, image) was produced by a generative AI system, typically by analysing statistical features of the output without access to provenance metadata.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board
· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

  • Is an instance

    GPTZero

  • Is an instance

    Turnitin AI Writing Detection

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

  • Not an instance

    A plagiarism checker that compares against a corpus of known sources is not an AI detector in this sense

Editorial commentary

Detection tools have well-documented high false-positive rates (especially against non-native-English writing) and false-negative rates (against paraphrased AI text). Their outputs should be treated as one signal among many, never as proof. Many institutions have moved away from punitive use of detectors and toward disclosure-based governance.

References

  • Sadasivan et al. 2023 ‘Can AI-Generated Text be Reliably Detected?’ arXiv
  • OpenAI deprecation of AI Text Classifier (2023)

Also known as

AI detector · GPT detector

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element
xml
<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Detection tool (AI-generated)"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/detection-tool-ai-generated" />
Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)
json
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "name": "Detection tool (AI-generated)",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/detection-tool-ai-generated",
  "description": "A software system that estimates the probability that a given piece of content (text, image) was produced by a generative AI system, typically by analysing statistical features of the output without access to provenance metadata.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/generative-ai-use-and-disclosure/",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/detection-tool-ai-generated",
  "sameAs": [
    "AI detector",
    "GPT detector"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}
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