Researchers at the University of Cambridge have revealed the seven telltale signs that a piece of written content was generated by ChatGPT, after carefully analyzing more than 150 essays written by high school students and undergraduates.
They found that ChatGPT loves an Oxford Comma, repeats phrases and spits out tautological statements practically empty of meaning at a much higher frequency than humans.
While the findings are interesting, the sample size is quite small. There’s also no guarantee that the linguistic habits and techniques identified couldn’t and wouldn’t be used by a human. What’s more, AI content detection tools are largely unreliable; there’s still no way to know for certain that any given written content is AI-generated.
The 7 Telltale Signs Content is AI-Generated
The researchers at Cambridge analyzed 164 essays written by high school students with four essays written with a helping hand from ChatGPT.
The ChatGPT-assisted essays were generally more information-heavy and had more reflective elements, but the markers at Cambridge found that they lacked the level of comparison and analysis typically found in human-generated content.
According to UK-based publication The Telegraph, which broke the story, the researchers identified seven key indicators of AI content:
- Frequent use of Latin root words and “vocabulary above the expected level”
- Paragraphs starting with singular words like “however”, and then a comma
- Lots of numbered lists with colons
- Unnecessary clarificatory language (e.g. “true fact”)
- Tautological language (“Lets come together to unite”)
- Repetition of the same word or phrase twice
- Consistent and frequent use of Oxford commas in sentences
Are There Any Other Ways to Spot ChatGPT Plagiarism?
Yes and no. There are many tools online that claim to be able to detect AI content, but when I tested a wide range of them last year, I found many to be wildly inaccurate.
For instance, OpenAI’s own text classifier – which was eventually shut down because it performed so poorly – was unable to identify that text written by ChatGPT (effectively itself) was AI-generated.
Even Turnitin has been using automated processes to detect plagiarized content in academic work for years, and they’ve also developed a powerful AI content checker. The company has always maintained that verdicts arrived at by their tools should be treated as an indication, not a cast-iron accusation.
“Given that our false positive rate is not zero” Turnitin explains in a blog post discussing its AI content detection capabilities.
🔎 Want to browse the web privately? 🌎 Or appear as if you're in another country?
Get a huge 86% off Surfshark with this special tech.co offer.
“You as the instructor will need to apply your professional judgment, knowledge of your students, and the specific context surrounding the assignment”.
None of these tools are infallible – and worse still, many of the free ones you’ll find lurking at the top of the Google Search results are completely and utterly useless.
Is It Wrong to Use AI for School or College Work?
While asking AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini to write you an essay isn’t quite “plagiarism” in the same way copying content written by other people and passing it off as your own is, it’s certainly not advised.
Whether it’s objectively plagiarism or not is likely irrelevant – the educational institution you’re enrolled in has probably created guidelines explicitly banning generative AI. Many universities have already taken a similar approach to peer review and other academic processes.
Besides, the whole point of writing an essay is to consider the range of ideas and views on the topic you’re writing about and evaluate them using your head. Getting an AI to do it for you defeats the whole point of writing the essay in the first place.
Our advice – considering the consequences of being accused of plagiarism while at university – is to stick to the rules. Who knows – you might learn something while you’re at it!
