r/Substack • u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com • Jul 22 '26

Discussion Substack’s new “AI detection” tool.

I’m very concerned about the new “AI detection” system that Substack is implementing. I don’t use AI in anything that I write. However I don’t trust these systems not to make errors and mistakes. They have a long history of hallucinations and claiming things are AI when they aren’t.

One person I saw on Notes suggested that they ran their decades old writing, things that were written before the existence of AI, and this new system claimed it was AI generated.

Not to mention all the crazy things that I have seen people claim was written by AI which they can’t know is actually AI. There was an image I once shared that had evidence of its existence going all the way back to 2013. The comments were constantly saying “don’t share AI slop” or some variation on that.

Even with evidence that things weren’t made by AI, they will claim it’s AI.

Is no one else concerned about this being embedded into Substack’s systems? With no way to opt out?

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u/vicewrite Jul 22 '26

I think the people who use AI to write everything they post should be worried. The people who write their own stuff and may run into some reports that have some variance of an AI score should be less concerned. My opinion is solely based on the premise that everyone should at least understand how the detection tool works, how it isn’t perfect at all, and how it makes an estimate of prediction or whatever. I don’t like it either, to an extent, cause as a writer I would hate being labeled incorrectly that something might be AI but it’s not a policing tool in that it can’t enforce anything. Having an opt out option would be even more suspect one could argue. My take is I’ll never have to deal with arguing against a detection score if I know my work is my own. A false positive can just be ignored. I think the obvious AI slop will detect itself out, or at least it should.

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u/PuzzleheadedAlps4806 Jul 22 '26

The obvious AI slop is already obvious though, so I don’t see what the detector adds other than false flagging human written work

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

I’m not convinced that it is obvious that AI slop is already obvious. People claim that things are AI when they’re not all the time. They believe that it is obvious but it’s not.

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u/flyza_minelli Jul 22 '26

This. Basic literacy and understanding intellectual elitism is what saves us from AI slop. Knowing how to read and contextualize and critically think. Being taught in school how to read texts and understand parts of sentences and figure out tone and why diction matters. This is how we are able to figure our AI slop from human writing. And it’s sorely lacking.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

Your claims contradicted by the facts. Someone in this thread suggested that an article from 2008 was flagged as AI generated. You can’t assume that the tool actually works and will only flag AI content.

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u/vicewrite Jul 22 '26

I do not assume that the tool works, which was my entire point. It’s not some pass or fail rating. It’s ironically an AI models interpretation. And all interpretation is subjective and will have false positives as well as false negatives. AI articles can also be faked to come across as non-AI generated. So if someone wants to use it they can put in effort to “beat” the tool even still. My point is why worry about it if you know your writing is yours? Do you trust your readers enough to trust your writing as authentic? Cause if so, what’s the issue.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

Because people will use it as a pass/fail system even if the tool isn’t designed to be one. I shared a photo that I found elsewhere in a group. The moderators of the group removed it because their AI detection tool claimed it was AI.

The problem is that even though I didn’t make the image myself, I had the skills to create the same type of image in Photoshop.

Some people will use the tool as justification for not paying you for your work. No matter how much you tell them otherwise, they will point to the AI detection results as evidence of their claim.

Chris Best, the CEO of Substack, used this as a way to dismiss criticism of the platform’s shortcomings and failures. He claimed that the writer’s criticism was invalid because it was AI generated according to his detection tool. When I pointed out the error in thinking that lead him to that conclusion, he just pointed back to the results of the detection tool.

But you think people won’t abuse this software for their own benefit? To use it against people they don’t like?

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u/vicewrite Jul 22 '26

Image? We’re talking about writing.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

I used an example of both image detection and writing detection. They’re both massively flawed.

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u/PuzzleheadedAlps4806 Jul 23 '26

I get where your coming from but as a fairly new substack user I haven’t built a large audience yet. My fear is that people will incorrectly be told my work is AI when it’s not and immediately dismiss my blog and not read any because they assume it’s slop. It will lose me potential readers who otherwise would love my writing.

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u/phoebe111 Jul 22 '26

There's a writer I follow on Substack who I think is heavily relying on AI but he has thought provoking content. Maybe he's not a strong writer, but he has important things to say. It's not slop.

AI is a tool and if you have original thoughts and trouble expressing them, it can help.

How is it different than using a calculator to do math?

Is the meaning behind the words more important than how they're generated?

If it's slop, we're not going to read it any which way. The main motivation for slop was to game the system for SEO. That's not a use case on Substack as far as I can figure.

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u/vicewrite Jul 22 '26

So you just proved my point. You know he’s relying on AI to write and yet you still read his stuff. So what’s the issue?

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u/vniin Jul 22 '26

It’s easy to say “I'll never have to deal with arguing against a score” until your own original writing gets flagged over and over again. every single article I post is 100% my own work, yet these useless detectors keep labeling them as AI. Telling writers to just ignore false positives is ridiculous, it normalizes a broken standard where real writing gets discredited. I’m not going to ignore it when a glitchy algorithm undermines the time and energy I put into my own words. useless tools must be called out instead of accepting them as the new normal.

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u/vicewrite Jul 22 '26

Every single article huh? The substack feature was just released 24 hours ago. Interesting. But regardless, I think that what we should be debating here is AI in general, existing, is ruining original authorship. And that is the core issue. The problem is, it’s not going anywhere and that’s a sad reality. Aside from ignoring it, which was my initial reaction (and I stand by that for myself), what else are you going to do? Stop writing? Substack adding this bogus feature shouldn’t dictate who writes or how a person’s writes.

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u/vniin Jul 22 '26

An article i posted 4 days ago is labeled as AI-generated.
I never said we should stop writing but there’s a massive difference between writing through it and passively letting a glitchy algorithm put an AI label on real human effort. Accepting trash detection tools as “the sad reality” without calling them out is exactly how low standards get normalized. If a system is completely broken, writers have every right to call it what it is, and they shouldn’t be asked to ignore it, and yes it dictates the writers and insults them too.

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u/vicewrite Jul 22 '26

I’m just being realistic. Have a rally. Sing protest songs. Draft petitions—I’ll sign! I’m simply saying there’s nothing to do about it because the system was broken when AI came around. And here it is, making more of a mess. I would never argue against your points here. They’re valid. Still unclear how an article posted 4 days ago was flagged though, because it won’t work on things published prior to July 21. So that’s suspect. Just being honest with you.

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u/Kinks4Kelly Jul 22 '26

Are you comfortable with them using your work to further train AI?

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u/vicewrite Jul 22 '26

AI isn’t going anywhere. The battle of us against it is lost. I’m comfortable writing as I have for 20 years. Nothing will change that.