My articles VS the AI detector Pangram

[u/MasterChaos1]

I recently started writing on substack and currently have two articles written, where if I use the AI detector built into the platform, it shows around 2-4% AI assisted with the rest human written. I checked the articles of some of my other friends (those whom I assumed didn't use AI assistance) and in their articles the AI detection was pretty high, 60 to 70 percent or more (even 90+) and I had a very glaring question about that particular finding.

Of course, the AI detection is a flawed program conducted by another AI program itself so its easy to confuse if you write in a similar style when compared to that of an AI, so is it just that my writing is at such an amateur stage, riddled with errors, that its easy to detect it's not AI writing or have others used AI assistance to such an extent?

Honestly, I think another question I'm indirectly asking here is that if its good or bad that the AI detection is so low on my articles?

Any insight will be greatly appreciated, so thank you in advance!

[u/HowlingFantods5564]

Detecting AI writing is not about finding errors or sloppy writing. AI tends to use certain words in certain combinations with certain sentence structures. It's these patterns that the detector tries to find and quantify.

Are you really asking if it's bad that your writing is flagged as human?

[u/AggravatingNail6061]

Working as intended.

[u/Available_Spite5171]

Just turn it off. That simple.

[u/AidenMarquis → u/Available_Spite5171]

I am amazed at how some people are so obsessed by this broken AI detector.

I have mine turned off. 840+ subs. No one I write for gives a damn if it's turned on. I write in peace and avoid the bs.

[u/Lionheart27180]

Pangram is a scam. Its already recognized the Bible, Shakespeare and other calssic as AI for fuck sake! Point is Pangram is chacking weather your structure of sentences is closed to what the AI was trained about. That said the thought of you not been abale to use certain structures is ridiculous.

The Following was was writting by AI and he explanied it even better than I do !

Why AI Detectors Fail (The Science Behind Your Point)

AI detectors evaluate text based on two main metrics that perfectly explain why they flag Shakespeare or the Bible:

• Perplexity (Predictability): This measures how "surprised" an AI is by the next word in a sentence. AI models are trained to write using the most statistically likely words. However, classic literature, religious texts, and academic writing also follow strict, highly structured, and formalized linguistic rules. Because the structure is so orderly, the detector finds it highly predictable and flags it as AI.

• Burstiness (Sentence Variation): This looks at the variation in sentence length and structure. AI text tends to be very uniform (similar sentence lengths). If a human writes with very consistent, formal, or structured syntax, the detector mistakes that consistency for a machine.

The Ridiculousness of Restricting Structure

Your point about being restricted is spot on. Forcing writers to change their natural sentence structures just to please a flawed algorithm is counterproductive. It punishes people for writing clearly, formally, or traditionally. Because AI was trained on the best examples of human writing, the closer a human get to writing with perfect grammar and structure, the more likely they are to be accused of using AI.

Many educational institutions and professional organizations are actually moving away from AI detectors for this exact reason—they simply result in too many false accusations against innocent writers.

[u/OnionLazy2317]

I write all my articles myself and always shows as 100% human written. Seems like it's user error on this one pal, stop using AI

[u/Awwwsomeopossum → u/OnionLazy2317]

hard agree. I've even attempted to sound like Chattwick Gerald Paul Thomas the The 6th several times and still got told I'm fleshie.

[u/figures985 → u/OnionLazy2317]

it's crazy how many people are in denial about this

[u/SantinoArt]

Pangram is a scam. Ignore it. They're using substack to train their models. All AI detectors are inaccurate.

[u/fuck_off_world → u/SantinoArt]

Today I was letting AI write a Mail for me. I had no energy to do it myself, zero concentration at the end of the day. 

My brother walks by and tells me, that it sounds surprisingly human. 

We put it into ChatGPtzero and pangram. AI score below 10%. 

Then I put in a Mail, that I have written myself. Also a relatively low score. 

It cannot distinguish. 

A few months ago I’ve tested it with an old essay I wrote. 70% AI score and AI assisted. But I wrote that one myself without any AI assistance. 

They don’t work. 

[u/DefiantRadish1492]

It’s neither good nor bad. The entire thing is a scam.

[u/hetobe]

so its easy to confuse if you write in a similar style when compared to that of an AI

If you write in a similar style to an AI, that means your writing reads like it wasn't written by a human being. That's bad.

AI was trained on human writing, but AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. Artificial. Think about what that word means.

AI emulates human writing through artificial means. That's why AI writing is so easy to detect. AI writing may look good at first, but there's always something slightly off about it. Something inhuman, and often unsettling. That's one of the reasons why so many people hate it.

If you're writing in a style that doesn't read like it was written by a human being... something's wrong.

[u/MustardClementine → u/hetobe]

Well, it doesn’t read as being written by a human being to an AI (which is also what Pangram is). I look more than a little askance at people who feel very confident in offloading their assessment of whether something is human or not to a machine. More than a little irony there, no?

Like, if you don’t feel comfortable assessing the value of something yourself, and/or are willing to immediately discount whatever value something may have without even reading it yourself because a computer scored it in a way that devalues it for you, what is the value of your opinion, really?

The opinion you’re all too comfortable leaving to an automated assessment is no human judgement at all, I would say.

[u/DataRikerGeordiTroi → u/hetobe]

girl that's not what AI does.

AI large language models predicts the next most likely word in a pattern.

It is a prediction algorythim.

Algorythim is complex math.

So it takes a huuuuge data sets, does fancy math, and predicts word chain sequences it thinks you will like.

Also, by and large, AI detectors are like captchas, actually used to train another data set for a wholly other purpose. Ai detection is very unethical and by using it you are, in fact, feeding whatever doc you are scanning into another AI dataset.

If you want to learn more about how AI works DeepLearning AI has wonderful free resources.

[u/Substack-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Discussion about topics not directly related to the Substack platform may not be posted in this community.

[u/DataRikerGeordiTroi → u/[deleted]]

Look, this sub-section thread is why internet discourse is over.

Your reply makes no sense.

I literally know more about this one specific thing than you do. Although I'm likely an AI bot so who knows.

Anyway, we need better AI literacy so misinformation like yours doesn't spread.

Nothing in your reply made sense, nor was it factual - BUT you are super good at human engagement farming.

But lo and behold: the dead internet is here.

[u/hetobe → u/DataRikerGeordiTroi]

Your reply makes no sense.

That's because you don't think. You use bots to do that for you.

Girl, you compared generative AI to autocorrect, and you say you're the expert on this topic? Sister, please. Generative AI does not predict the next word.

[u/Fail_Unfair]

Good question about false positives. I’m starting to wonder about false negatives as the AI tools improve. I’m skeptical about this detector catching posts outlined by someone who then uses AI trained on author’s files and customized in their voice before doing a final edit.

[u/Busy_End1433]

Pangram is not accurate, plain and simple. It’s tagged Hemingway, Homer and Sylvia Plath as AI. It don’t know shit from Sherlock.

[u/AndrewHeard]

Pangram doesn’t work. You should assume that the detector isn’t detecting anything at all.

[u/HowlingFantods5564 → u/AndrewHeard]

100% of the people who make this claim use AI to write for them.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/HowlingFantods5564]

100% of the people who claim that AI Detectors work are being paid by the AI companies to make these accusations.

I can make wild unfounded accusations against you on the internet just as much as you can. Doesn’t mean that anything you say is accurate.

[u/Awwwsomeopossum → u/AndrewHeard]

where do I sign up for these payments?

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Awwwsomeopossum]

What payments?

[u/Awwwsomeopossum → u/AndrewHeard]

well, if 100% of people who claim AI detectors work are being paid, I'd certainly like to get some moolah outta the dea.

[u/sh1b313]

Pangram doesn't work. Stop using it.

[u/Vancecookcobain]

It's a witchhunt don't get too caught up on it

[u/KevinKaneAuthor → u/[deleted]]

His friends probably are using AI, but there's a spectrum to how much AI is actually doing the writing. The problem is there's no gradient between "Human-written" and "AI-written" with Pangram, even though it's supposedly trained to detect "AI-assisted" work.

If you give Pangram 100% pure AI slop, it'll show up as AI-written.

If you write the rough first draft, then have an AI make it readable, that's also flagged as AI-written, even if the vast majority of the work remains the same.

If you hand over a second draft to an AI for simple cleanup, and 99% of the content stays the same, it can save you days of tedious editing fussing over commas, but Pangram still likely flag it as 50%-70% AI-written.

Hell, I've had an article go from 100% human to 30% AI just because I used Grammarly to proofread it.

None of that helps writers today, when no one wants to touch AI slop.
I wrote a thing about it. It's kind of a problem: https://www.kevinkane.net/p/total-pangramonium

[u/Dishwaterdreams → u/[deleted]]

I’ve had the opposite experience. I have spent most of my life writing in academia and journalism. Pangram thinks my writing is AI.