We live in a heavily digital world where everything seems to be created by artificial intelligence. We no longer find human created content online, or do we? Has AI become so saturated in our content marketing world, that there are no longer any human writers out there? No. We do still have human content, and that’s why having an ai checker in your toolbelt is a necessary option for everyone.
Whether you realize it or not, we are experiencing a digital race where AI and human beings are trying to work together in creating content. Not only that, but we are now seeing the race for AI to spot AI and wishing we will trust their process as they try to help us detect which content is written by AI and which may be written by a person.
It’s rather interesting that we must use a piece of artificial intelligence to determine if a piece of content on the internet was written by a robot or a person, but here we are, using AI to spot AI. The reality is that we have a lot of synthetic content online to weed through on a daily basis.
What is synthetic content?
When we say synthetic content, we are referring to any text, video, audio, or image that has used artificial intelligence to create it. This content does not have to be fake content, meaning that it is false information or a smear campaign, rather it is created by AI rather than a human being so most people consider it to be synthetic content.
We have plenty of AI creation tools like Midjourney and ChatGPT that can create multiple versions of content from videos to text that could trick anyone into thinking they are real pieces of content. These AI models are an excellent tool for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and others in the creative industry that simply don’t have time to develop high workloads of content, or need to have graphic design for marketing on a budget.
As with most technology, there is always a pros and cons list to using the technology to harm or benefit society. The issue with synthetic content is that it is often used to spread misinformation, ruin someone’s reputation, or it is plagiarized from someone else online.
Since AI is creating this content, it is using the database of information it was trained on and that data is something from the internet that a human being created at some point. Programs like ChatGPT will then pull information from their database and rework it into some form of synthetic content that people and businesses are using as authentic content.
How do we determine if a piece of content is synthetic?
The best method to determine if something is synthetic or not, is to use AI detection tools. These AI checkers are able to examine the content using their machine learning processing along with the programmed algorithm to determine if something is fake or not.
The process checks grammar usage, word choices, and even the burstiness or perplexity of the content to see if it fits the definition of AI generated or human written. This is obviously not a fully reliable way to spot AI inside content, but it is the best option we have today.
Some of these tools will dig a bit deeper doing more techy stuff that we are not going to get into today, but the key here is that AI detection tools are developed to be a version of AI that can spot AI, thus helping with the battle against synthetic content online. This will give you a percent report back on how likely the content is created by artificial intelligence.
Do AI checkers get it wrong?
AI checkers will absolutely get it wrong from time to time, and they may get it wrong quite often if you’re not using a tool that’s been on the market for a long time. The longer that a tool has been available to the public, we feel the more reliable it will be as a partner in this battle against fake content.
The AI checkers are doing their best to keep up with the latest developments of AI content creation tools. The reality is that AI is constantly learning, so even the ChatGPT’s of the world are constantly figuring out new ways to bypass the AI checker system. This is a natural process that AI seems to be doing to “survive” in a world where people are trying to detect this technology within online creations.
With more and more advanced tech that can create deepfake videos that look so realistic, and more imagery that is tricking people into thinking it is real, we have to consider that AI checkers may get it wrong from time to time. This is why we suggest that you have an AI checker person who oversees this tool as you try to use AI to spot AI inside this battle against synthetic content.