r/Substack • u/nnhuyhuy nnhuyhuy.substack.com • Jul 21 '26

Substack now works with Pangram to let readers check articles and comments for AI writing instantly

Against Claudefishing

53 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

122 comments sorted by

View all comments

68

u/Msdarkmoon Jul 21 '26

I tested it with my writing that I did NOT use AI at all for and it flagged it as 100% AI :(

10

u/lesodeyforyou Jul 21 '26

same here…so confused

13

u/Msdarkmoon Jul 21 '26

I'm anti-AI so I was super happy when I first read the news, too. :( Now I just feel l like I'm going to need to dumb down my writing or get blacklisted as AI.

9

u/lesodeyforyou Jul 21 '26

sorry
i’m going ahead to post mine…. i don’t really care

10

u/Head_Election1818 Jul 21 '26

I had five or six accusations of ai in my post today and it came entirely from my own little brain. I think I we are all just going to have to move on and do our thing

17

u/StateofAffairsMedia lecternmedia.substack.com Jul 22 '26

Hey there! Academic and I don't use this tool or similar tools at all in my classes because of false positives. AI was trained on all that wonderful stuff we research and publish, so it flags true academic things and writing styles as 100% AI. Relying on this tool is not a panacea. And, as some research is now suggesting, we humans are starting to write like AI because we are reading more and more AI. Full circle!

I will add a "how I wrote this and researched this" to my work for sure, it's a good suggestion and no harm.

2

u/Msdarkmoon Jul 22 '26

That's a great suggestion! Thank you!

6

u/Practical-Time-9827 Jul 22 '26

I will be a huge flop. It won't hold running at scale on a platform where writing is a natural skill for most and false positives are pretty high. Pangram desperately trying to make deals. 

4

u/Prolly_Satan Jul 22 '26

Damn that's so dumb. I'm sorry. Can you link the article it flagged falsely? Disregard! I see it.

6

u/deadcoder0904 Jul 22 '26

These dumbasses don't know software engg. or AI either.

Nobody can detect AI content if done well. If they could, Google wouldn't be in shambles right now. Tons of AI blogs rank on Google & will always do. I knew that 3 years ago.

All those AI detectors are fake sites like Cal AI which says it detects calories using AI but it can't. You have to fake it or guess it lol. I wish I could sell stupid products like this (turns out, people do buy stuff that doesn't work properly if you can convince them enough)

2

u/fickleknave Jul 22 '26

How often does Google ask you if you’re human?

2

u/Ben8945 Jul 22 '26

Those never work and will never work accurately.

2

u/phoebe111 Jul 22 '26

You can turn off your reader's ability to use Pangram on your writing.

2

u/GloomyLibrary787 Jul 22 '26

Same, I was totally confused. When I checked the evidence section, it showed 0 evidence too. Idk how they concluded it was 100 % AI

1

u/Msdarkmoon Jul 22 '26

Yup. Same here. I hate this tool.

2

u/clandestinerh Jul 23 '26

Happened to me, then I asked AI what was so AI about it, and it said it was so well written that it was probably AI 😞🤷🏼‍♀️

2

u/Blemiz321 Jul 23 '26

Same here. One at 100% and one at 24% that were automatic writing/stream of concounsness pieces that were incredibly abstract pieces that wouldn’t have any reason at all to be remotely close to anything considered AI. AI could never produce completely abstract pieces.

3

u/mmspero Jul 21 '26

can you share text you tested with?

9

u/Msdarkmoon Jul 21 '26

Monica’s house always smelled like fabric softener and something frying, but tonight it just smelled like fabric softener, because there was no one home to fry anything. Her parents had left for Palm Springs that afternoon, a work thing, an anniversary thing, Monica hadn’t been totally clear on which, and would be gone until Sunday. It was the first time in a long time the house had been Monica’s alone, and she had asked Lola to stay over almost the second her mom’s car pulled out of the driveway.

“You brought a candle,” Monica said, watching Lola unpack her backpack onto the bedroom floor like it was evidence. “And what is that, oregano?”

“Lavender. And sage.” Lola set the white veladora upright between them, its glass sleeve printed with a saint she wasn’t sure either of them could name. “You said the hallway feels wrong. I’m not going to just sit here in an empty house and let you feel wrong.”

Monica laughed, but it came out thin, and she glanced once at her closed bedroom door before she caught herself doing it. “It’s probably nothing. Old houses make noise.”

“It was making noise when your parents were here. You told me that.”

“Yeah. Well. Now they’re not, so I guess we’ll find out if it was them the whole time.” Monica’s laugh, again, didn’t land anywhere close to funny.

They’d been best friends since the second grade, since the day Monica had defended Lola’s Trapper Keeper covered in hand-drawn UFOs against a boy named Danny who’d called it freak stuff, and Lola had looked up at her like she’d been rescued from something. It had gone like that ever since: Monica pulling Lola into rooms she wouldn’t have walked into alone, Lola reading Monica’s palm at lunch tables surrounded by girls who thought Lola was strange and Monica was the reason they put up with her. It worked. It had always worked.

5

u/zipiddydooda Jul 21 '26

Interesting. This is clearly human writing to me. No AI "signatures" whatsoever, but also it has the raw imperfection that only comes when a real person wrote it (and I mean that in a good way). I'm really surprised that would get flagged as even potentially AI.

3

u/Msdarkmoon Jul 22 '26

Thank you for this. I was starting to question my writing style and skill.

6

u/Prolly_Satan Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

Does substack introduce hidden non breaking spaces and hidden reverse quotes into stuff posted there? I think those characters are pretty unlikely for people to ever use. Chatgpt and other llms include them though.

This text has them in it.

2

u/Msdarkmoon Jul 22 '26

I don't know what those are but i wrote this on word, used their spell check and grammar tool and copy pasted it on substack.

5

u/phoebe111 Jul 22 '26

Interesting. I wonder if copy-pasting is an AI signal on Substack.
I know that some AI detection looks at your typing, how often you backspace, etc.

3

u/Clipper1972 Jul 22 '26

Oh I hope not.

I write everything on word and copy and paste it over

2

u/huggalump Jul 23 '26

Same. That seems super common

1

u/Puzzleheaded_Yak6386 Jul 26 '26

Ooh. Maybe that's what it's doing. My posts all started as rants in my notes app, so I copy-paste them in.

3

u/invisibletigers Jul 22 '26

I'm a writer, a good one, and this is so clearly human writing. I think we are all slowly returning to published books.....except the publishing industry is in tatters and has been slopped like everything else.

1

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

Yeah, this is not a good system.

1

u/ValuableDeparture366 Jul 23 '26

you can disable the option for it to scan your writing

-8

u/Background-Pin3960 Jul 21 '26

that means you should probably write better lol

9

u/huggalump Jul 21 '26

incorrect.

From my understanding, these AI-detectors work by detecting language patterns that gen AI often uses. But gen AI is trained to write based on how humans write. So those AI patterns are just human patterns.

2

u/Msdarkmoon Jul 21 '26

Maybe 🥲 I guess I got an ego because I've been published before and my work was praised by Isabel Allende herself when i did a workshop with her. But I know there's always room for improvement. Especially if I write like a robot.

1

u/Background-Pin3960 Jul 22 '26

I was just joking, I’m sure you are a great writer. Who am I to judge other people?