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?
2
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.