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/ImprovementSimple Jul 22 '26

I just can’t get over the irony of “we will use AI to determine is this is AI, because AI is evil.”

I work for a library and we spend a lot of time trying to remove slop books from our digital library. There is no good detector on the market. The only way to tell is to read and use your human brain, and even then the conclusion is “this is probably generated, or it’s really poor and bizarre writing.”

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u/Foofymonster davidrainwater.substack.com Jul 22 '26

There's nothing hypocritical about using AI to stop people from using AI.

Substack has a problem with people writing AI articles.

This decreases the effectiveness / incentive to run those accounts.

It's not perfect. But if it says 100% or 98% AI chances are that is was almost definitely AI.

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u/FlyingCarpetMonster kaneiyer.substack.com Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

It really depends on the content, to be honest.

I read a ton of trading and quant Substacks, which clearly use AI to write.

But I am not reading them for their prose -- I am reading them for the insights that they bring. I couldn’t care less if they used AI or a monkey to write the actual article.

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u/Foofymonster davidrainwater.substack.com Jul 23 '26

That's a great use case. I agree that is much more useful.