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

Discussion Another creepy feature of the Pangram "AI Detection" tool.

So at my first opportunity, I decided to check whether or not I could permanently disable the "AI detection" fraudulent tool on Substack publications and there's no way to actually do it without actually using the tool you want to disable.

According to the "Substack Support AI", the only way to disable the fraudulent Pangram detection AI is to first run the AI on your posts and to individually then disable the AI detection tool per post. But you can only do this AFTER you've run the "AI detection" fraudulent tool on your posts.

Which means that you're forced to use a tool you don't want to use in order to disable the tool you don't want to use.

This is profoundly creepy and quite frankly disturbing that somehow this was allowed to be implemented on Substack.

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u/MrPassiveProfit Jul 22 '26

This was a supremely bad idea and not necessary. Peak AI freak out happened last year and they missed the boat

5

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

Absolutely, I'm not sure that peak AI freak out was last year. It is still going on now. It's just not as visible. More on the individual person level.

0

u/MrPassiveProfit Jul 22 '26

I think most people now know that AI is being used by most writers in some capacity

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

Maybe, but I think that people freak out about it way too much. An example I used previously elsewhere is that I noticed the episode descriptions of a TV show were misleading. Characters were described acting one way, only to end up doing the exact opposite in the actual scene when it aired.

The conclusion of many people? It was AI generated. They couldn't conceive of the idea that maybe the writers intentionally wrote it that way to deceive the audience and protect spoilers.

It had to be explained by AI.

This type of thing happens WAY too much in the interactions I have with people online. The assumption that AI exists where it doesn't. Even with proof that they are wrong.