Why it’s so hard to tell if a piece of text was written by AI – even for AI

By: Ambuj Tewari, University of Michigan, The Conversation

Outlets: The Conversation

Published: December 18, 2025

Words: 1,129

Last Updated: 3 weeks, 2 days ago

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By Ambuj Tewari, University of Michigan

People and institutions are grappling with the consequences of AI-written text. Teachers want to know whether students’ work reflects their own understanding; consumers want to know whether an advertisement was written by a human or a machine.

Writing rules to govern the use of AI-generated content is relatively easy. Enforcing them depends on something much harder: reliably detecting whether a piece of text was generated by artificial …

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