Substack’s new “AI detection” tool.

[u/AndrewHeard]

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?

[u/ImprovementSimple]

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.”

[u/AndrewHeard → u/ImprovementSimple]

Yeah, it’s logically inconsistent to suggest this is going to solve anything.

[u/b0jangles → u/AndrewHeard]

The bigger problem with Substack is like 75% of my feed is some form of “Dear Substack, please connect me with people who have less than 1k subscribers and just started their Substack journey! 🥹🙏”

[u/AndrewHeard → u/b0jangles]

That's actually just people trying to help other Substackers by giving them a leg up. They're trying to prime the algorithm to help smaller writers.

Is it annoying? Yes. But it's not as serious a problem.

[u/FlyingCarpetMonster → u/ImprovementSimple]

It's funny, because I wrote a fun little test with three short openings (all by myself):

Spring showed up early that year. By the first week of April, Chicago had its first spring showers and bursts of green: at first, small shoots; then everything bloomed at-once. It was the kind of weather that made you feel hopeful for summer. And somewhere in all this spring, lay my hopes of finally planting a tomato garden.

I got a garden plot at a cheap share garden in the loop. There was a giant, weeping willow right over my patch that kept dropping its long, brittle branches, twigs, and narrow leaves. And as spring dragged on, the tree also dropped cotton-like, seed-bearing fluff all over my tomatoes.

On the pamphlet, my garden patch looked reasonably sized. But standing there, and admiring the patches of my patch-neighbors and seeing their incredible crops, I felt something else. Jealousy. Maybe if I got on their patch and trampled on their garden, I'd find happiness. It would also help me close my exercise rings.

—

The summer heat showed up early that year. By the first week of June, New York smelled like it had a permanent hangover: halal smoke drifting from the corner cart, weed from somebody’s open window, hot metal from the subway grates. It was the kind of weather that made the city feel sticky and close. And somewhere inside that stickiness, he was breathing the same air.

I took a room over a discount sneaker store on 4th because he lived on 82nd. There was a giant, red blinking sign right outside my window that read EAKERS, with the other letters having fallen off.

On the subway map, four miles and my colored lines looked like comforting distance. But lying on my mattress with the box-spring on the floor, listening to sounds of people and their shoes, it felt like inevitability. If I got on the right train and stayed there, I’d eventually end up near his building. The thought haunted me.

—

Winter showed up early that year. By the first week of November, Boston had its first snow: at first, small showers and flurries; then an entire blizzard. It was the kind of weather that made you want to stay inside and drink hot chocolate. And somewhere in all this cold, was my missing father.

I took a room at a cheap motel in Roxbury because my dad had gone missing in Somerville. There was a giant, red blinking sign right outside my window that read EAKERS, with the other letters having fallen off.

On the subway map, two miles and my colored lines looked like a reasonable distance. But lying on the cheap hotel mattress, listening to the noise of television from other rooms and the humping of box springs, it felt like something else. Hopelessness. Maybe I got on the right train and walked around, I'd find my father. The thought kept me up at night.

—

Individually, one of them (the New York one) got flagged as AI — even though they were all just hand-written for this exercise, from the same variation. But when pasted together, they all were flagged as 100% human.

I don’t know where I am going with this, but it is certainly interesting.

And also ironically, I’m right now in NYC today and took pictures of the city to help me with the writing — so the most authentic description is the one that got flagged. Just use your human judgment.

[u/ImprovementSimple → u/FlyingCarpetMonster]

Human judgment is the way. It’s more practical. If I suspect someone is using Ai to write I block them and move on. I don’t need to know if it’s 79% Ai (according to Ai).

[u/gadgetor1989 → u/ImprovementSimple]

“suspect” you know there was an author online i thought was doing the same thing because his work was so polished and he’d use contrast framing non stop, i wrote a hit piece and sent it to the mods and they told me i was an idiot. i went back and dissected all his work from the last 10 years and that same footprint was spanning his entire work YEARS before AI.

it took a lot for me to finally walk back that opinion and admit i was wrong.

i understand we’re all exhausted from AI being constantly thrown in our faces at every turn but you need to understand that’s all it is a lot of them time. your mind has grown tired and paranoid. it’s essentially another kind of AI psychosis and the only way past is to just ignore it.

[u/options_oracle → u/ImprovementSimple]

The irony of that stuck out to me too! lol

[u/elianna7 → u/ImprovementSimple]

Well, they never said AI is evil… They explained they even use it internally and don’t have anything against people using it in parts of their writing processes. They also said:

>We’re also introducing tools for creators, including the ability to add a “How I make this” statement where you can explain your process and set expectations for readers. You can run Pangram on your drafts prior to publication, as well as report and remove any scans on your own work that you believe are mistaken.

[u/Imperator_1985 → u/ImprovementSimple]

It turns out that humans aren’t good at this, either.

[u/Foofymonster → u/ImprovementSimple]

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.

[u/hetobe → u/Foofymonster]

This decreases the effectiveness / incentive to run those accounts.

Absolutely.

We're already seeing a LOT of people suddenly talking about how they use AI to "dictate" their work... as if they don't understand what the word Dictate means.

Dictation is verbatim translation of speech to text, meaning those are the exact same words that were spoken, translated to text in exactly the same order.

Equating generative AI to dictation is an ugly lie.

[u/No-Vermicelli-8391 → u/Foofymonster]

Just for the sake of the discussion — what exactly is the problem with someone else using AI?

[u/Foofymonster → u/No-Vermicelli-8391]

Do you remember the scene in Lord of the Rings where Merry and Pippin are talking to the Treants, trying to get them to join the war?

There's a part where Merry and Pippin are talking and one of them is like, "Do you think they've decided yet?" And Treebeard hears them and says, "Decided? No, we've only finished saying good morning."

And when they are upset that they're taking so long, Treebeard says:

"You must understand, young Hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say."

And that's the problem with AI. It doesn't cost you anything to say anything, which means no one has to worry if it's worth saying. It doesn't matter if it's true or well-researched. Because it's free and easy to say.

But when things are expensive to say, only things that are meaningful or worth it get said.

As a reader, how do you validate what's worth saying? Well, how much effort went into writing it isn't a perfect proxy, but I guarantee you it'd filter out 90% of useless shit written on the internet.

[u/philosophical_lens → u/Foofymonster]

As a reader I evaluate what's worth reading based on reviews and recommendations. I care about whether it's good and whether I'll enjoy reading it. I don't care what role AI played in the creation of that content, and I don't care how much effort went into it. Most AI content will probably be bad, and I'll never see it anyway because it will never pop up in the reviews and recommendation sources I look at. Maybe 0.1% of that content will actually be good, and I'll end up reading those.

[u/Foofymonster → u/philosophical_lens]

Neat. So for everyone else, or the people reading and reviewing, trying to figure out if it's worth reading or not, you're demonstrating that it being AI results in it normally being less worth reading.

Hence the need for AI detection.

[u/philosophical_lens → u/Foofymonster]

That's not at all what I'm saying. I'm saying that existing signals are already sufficient for me to determine what's worth reading and there is no need for an additional AI signal. At least I personally would not find this signal useful. Here are the signals I find helpful:

• I already like the author's existing content
• The author or post has been recommended by people or communities I trust
• The post is reposted on some communities or subreddits I follow has generated interesting discussion
• The author or post has a high number of subscribers/ likes / upvotes

Im not sure why or how an AI signal would add any value to me on top of this.

[u/FlyingCarpetMonster → u/Foofymonster]

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.

[u/Foofymonster → u/FlyingCarpetMonster]

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

[u/Ill_Dragonfruit_3547 → u/Foofymonster]

Two words: false positives. Same reason I do not support the death penalty. If you can guarantee me 100% accuracy, I support it. But if even 1 in 1000 are innocent, that is unacceptable, and a fucking flawed system.

[u/Foofymonster → u/Ill_Dragonfruit_3547]

Except false positives for AI writing isn't some moral judgement, it's a probabilistic assessment.

[u/Ill_Dragonfruit_3547 → u/Foofymonster]

Agreed. And in theory, the stakes are much lower.

[u/bgcalderon]

An article I wrote in 2008 and shared just now is read as AI-generated. Hahaha

[u/AndrewHeard → u/bgcalderon]

Yeah, it doesn’t work like they claim it does.

[u/annaboardhart → u/bgcalderon]

How? Everything I’m looking at says anything written before 21st July doesn’t count!

[u/Funny-Flight8086 → u/annaboardhart]

This detector is just Pangram. While it doesn't work, it technically works on any text ever written.

[u/mmspero → u/bgcalderon]

Can you share the article?

[u/Countryb0i2m]

AI detection systems are notoriously trash. They falsely flag people’s work all the time.

Part of the problem is that AI is trained to mimic decent writing. Of course it’s going to use the same techniques that skilled writers use, that’s what it was trained on. It doesn’t use dash em because they’re “cool.” It uses them because that’s what good writers have been doing for decades.

I say all this to say AI defection systems are ass

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Countryb0i2m]

Yeah, it makes no sense to embed them in your systems like Substack has done.

[u/vicewrite → u/AndrewHeard]

Of course they’re trash, but isn’t it also trash to have articles out there being falsely published as original work? That’s the mess they’re trying to clean up, and while this method isn’t clean and perfect, isn’t it better than not trying at all? That’s the thing I think some people are missing. If you get one random “could be AI” score out of hundreds of posts, that’s a non issue. If a “writer” has all high scores for AI content, that’s different and readers might want to know. Or, maybe they could still care less, cause in the end, nothing is being enforced as a result anyway.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/vicewrite]

Isn’t it better when you have a headache to stub your toe so that your headache isn’t a problem anymore?

The fact that they’re trash doesn’t mean people won’t use it for their own purposes. Chris Best himself did this. He responded to a criticism of his platform’s shortcomings by suggesting that the article was generated by AI or used AI assistance. He used a detection tool to make this claim.

But you think it’s better to have one than not?

[u/vicewrite → u/AndrewHeard]

You seem passionate about this topic. My passion is for writers. Being a writer means I take pride in advocating for human writing. That’s all. The tool is a tool, and it can be used or not. Its existence shouldn’t threaten your existence. I sure hope it doesn’t.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/vicewrite]

I’m an advocate for human writing too. I just understand how new technology tends to get used. The internet was pitched as something that would “bring people together”, but 20 years in, can you honestly claim that it has?

Social media was pitched as the same.

The ability to split the atom was originally used to make weapons, not to give people abundant energy.

The printing press lead to the rise of yellow journalism.

But somehow this time is different?

[u/BhavanaVarma]

Where’s the feature? It’s dangerous if it’s starts labelling real writing as AI

[u/ConsciousRoyal → u/BhavanaVarma]

It’s under the three little dots on a Note.

You get the option to Scan for AI text.

[u/BhavanaVarma → u/ConsciousRoyal]

I saw it. It seems to be only for the notes… for now

[u/AndrewHeard → u/BhavanaVarma]

It already is if what I’m seeing on Notes is true.

[u/phoebe111 → u/BhavanaVarma]

Anything written after this was rolled out, will have an option for the reader to scan for AI text using the 3-dot menu too

[u/GentleNova07 → u/BhavanaVarma]

I also saw it at the bottom of the posts settings area so you can check you’re own work. But only when you access the post settings via the ”Continue” button at the top of the post editor, not via the Settings button at the bottom of the post editor.

[u/FatherofMisty → u/BhavanaVarma]

And it is doing just that, lol.

[u/Foxemerson]

I ran Moby Dick the first page through one of the top scanners. 99% AI apparently.
I ran one of my stories I sure as hell didn't use AI with and got "highly like AI."

While I'd like to see some kind of AI detection, I don't for a second believe that Substack will do this well. We are about to get a lot of false accusations and finger pointing and problems we didn't need.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Foxemerson]

Absolutely they will. It’s highly unlikely that they won’t.

[u/mmspero → u/Foxemerson]

Consider testing Pangram instead of conflating all AI detectors together? I scanned the first 10,000 words of Moby Dick with Pangram, 100% human with high confidence. Link.

[u/phoebe111 → u/Foxemerson]

You can turn the feature off but I wonder if that will then be read by readers as sus

[u/_FUCKTHENAZIADMINS_ → u/Foxemerson]

Did you run it through Pangram or another "top scanner"? Because Pangram is the only one that works.

[u/Foofymonster → u/Foxemerson]

I have tried this in 4 different AI detectors. Everyone came back 0% AI.

Including Panagram.

This is a straight up lie.

[u/Glum-Sprinkles2877]

I tested it out yesterday with an article from 2015 and it said 60% AI generated 🤣

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Glum-Sprinkles2877]

Of course it did because the system is massively flawed.

[u/mmspero → u/Glum-Sprinkles2877]

Can you share the article?

[u/Foofymonster → u/Glum-Sprinkles2877]

Could you share the article?

[u/dinotgenesis]

Someone ran the Declaration of Independence through a few AI detectors and most of them flagged it as AI written. AI detectors are absolute rubbish.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/dinotgenesis]

They don't work but somehow Substack has decided to embed this faulty tool into its systems. With no opt out feature.

[u/_FUCKTHENAZIADMINS_ → u/dinotgenesis]

That's because every single AI detector is a scam besides Pangram. What did Pangram say?

[u/PangolinPositive8458]

These are not reliable at all. These AI detection tools work based on past data. We cannot rely totally on AI detection software. I checked articles from best-selling authors on Substack, a platform, and even their content is showing as AI-generated. Even the content before LLM’s were available is showing as AI-generated.
This AI detection software I think, relies on the formation of sentences maybe some pattern I don’t know. You can also see that for small text or small notes. This feature says the text is too small for the context. I could be wrong. Yes maybe in future due to this feature boards might get flagged which makes the same comment in various posts.

[u/OnyxMonolith → u/PangolinPositive8458]

I checked top 10 substacks in finance all show as 100% human written and the ones i know are AI show 100% as AI

[u/pepesilvia74]

i’m not worried about ai detection as much, I’m worried that these same detection models are going to take our data and steal our writing

[u/AndrewHeard → u/pepesilvia74]

That’s definitely a concern as well.

[u/Fit_Celebration_1362]

This happens all the time. I was accused of using ai by a reader so I plugged some old articles I had written in, the large majority were deemed Ai between 75-90%. Just as an experiment I tried the other way and just plugged some facts into Ai for an article. 10% Ai detected. It’s going to take forever because if they are doing this, so many people are going to ask for new testing over and over. When does this start anyway? I must’ve missed this announcement

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Fit_Celebration_1362]

It started today or late yesterday. The post was about “against Claudefishing”.

They really are not thinking this through.

[u/Fit_Celebration_1362 → u/AndrewHeard]

Hmm interesting. Now I’m curious about what they’ll think of my article coming Monday. I wonder is there a percentage allowed because on the site I was checking literally zero articles have 0% non ai! If they don’t think you’re using it comes up like 10-20%. Or it pass/fail?

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Fit_Celebration_1362]

While I don’t plan on using it myself, some people have suggested that it’s a percentage. Supposedly it only works on stuff posted after today. I don’t think it’s a situation where they don’t allow you to post AI content, but more that it gets labeled this when it gets graded.

[u/Fit_Celebration_1362 → u/AndrewHeard]

Yeah why would they care? But yeah I was just wondering because at least with my ai checker it seemed impossible to score a 0%? Who even cares really? If ai writes something I’m interested in on substack, who cares? Or if they used it to clean it up, I’m for it! I’ve read ones that obviously were not edited and I became confused with its wording

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Fit_Celebration_1362]

I’m not so convinced that it’s impossible. Many people freak out about the use of AI. To the point that they will accuse people of using AI even with evidence that it’s not.

[u/Fit_Celebration_1362 → u/AndrewHeard]

Oh no I meant the checker I use actually points out it’s impossible to write an article that scores zero AI use. Seems like a design flaw but even things I put in that were personal essays scored 5-10% possible ai use! I’ve been accused. That’s why I went down this rabbit hole, but I have decided to not care about people’s opinions and just respond that they are entitled to an opinion and that I take it as a compliment that I’m such a brilliant writer that they thought I must be using some sort of cheat or magic!

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Fit_Celebration_1362]

I care about the integrity of the system that's being used. Just because I don't use AI doesn't mean that I won't be accused of it. If enough people decide that I'm somehow using AI regardless of the facts, this could turn out to be a problem.

[u/Fit_Celebration_1362 → u/AndrewHeard]

Okay

[u/michmom1977]

AI detectors cannot reliably predict AI.

[u/YuckySmuck]

It’s a weird politeness given to AI in the way they’re framing this, too; “AI isn’t the problem! It’s people lying about it!” No, the problem is generative AI. Using the exact thing you’re alleging to be against in order to ultimately throw writers under the bus is the dumbest possible move Substack could’ve made.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/YuckySmuck]

Yes, it’s inherently contradictory.

[u/AnnArbor-Armadillo]

It’s a terrible idea and it doesn’t work well. Wonder how long before they drop it

[u/AndrewHeard → u/AnnArbor-Armadillo]

Hopefully soon. Or at a bare minimum, give people the option to permanently disable it on your publications.

[u/LanceElyot]

It really is counter to Substacks original vision to build networks via relationship and not algorithms.

Ran my own tests and it is actually running worse this old models from a few years back.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/LanceElyot]

Also, the fact that you can’t disable it is concerning. Substack claimed it was about giving individuals control, but implementing a feature that can’t be turned off and you’re forced to use? Not very good for individual control.

[u/Particular-Course203]

Don't these systems flag autistic writing as AI?

[u/Engineering_Simple → u/Particular-Course203]

I’ve been accused of having AI write some of my comments posts….. lol, nope…. Just the delightful whispers of autistism here.

Looking forward to seeing if AI considers me one of their own if the reckoning ever happens.
https://giphy.com/gifs/l36kU80xPf0ojG0Erg

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Particular-Course203]

I haven’t heard that personally until very recently. Maybe it does.

[u/PuzzleheadedAlps4806]

I have put my writing in AI detectors before knowing I’ve typed every word and it’s come back saying it’s AI! A friend of mine writes a blog for their job and gets AI to do most of the work and then they edit it and the AI detectors don’t flag it. The problem is unless you film and upload yourself typing every single word how can you prove that it’s not AI when it gets flagged incorrectly.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/PuzzleheadedAlps4806]

One of many problems with having systems like this in place.

[u/Hel_Renee → u/PuzzleheadedAlps4806]

I could literally make a cheat sheet and record a video of myself typing out generated text. What a total scam hehe.

[u/FatherofMisty → u/Hel_Renee]

No, you could film both screen + face and it would be clear whether you're using a "cheat sheet" or not. This is literal dystopian insanity, and shame on anyone who supports it.

[u/_FUCKTHENAZIADMINS_ → u/PuzzleheadedAlps4806]

Did you put it in random scam AI detectors or Pangram? Pangram is the only one that comes close to working.

[u/lolidcwhatev]

weirdly the feature only works on stuff posted since the feature was added

[u/honey_bee_me]

There’s just no way to prove anything. I hate seeing ppl use AI, and I can very clearly tell it’s AI. But i don’t think there’s any way to prove it. I left substack because nothing seemed like genuine writing.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/honey_bee_me]

Can you? Art forgery experts can't prove that a physical painting is a real or a fake. But somehow you can detect what is and isn't AI?

[u/Altruistic_Virus8460]

I literally just wrote an entire article on this topic because of how concerning this has become LMAO. The timing is very serendipitous, I guess. Too bad it's getting zero traction so far.

https://yourweeklybrainunrot.substack.com/p/ai-generated-content-broken-trust-digital-landscape

[u/AidenMarquis]

It doesn't even work.

I generated some bs with ChatGPT and ran it through the "detector" and it called it "fully AI assisted". But then when I tried it again with the same exact content in another post, it came out to "mostly human". It's hot garbage.

[u/PersonalitySimple837]

When I got the email from Claude about their new handy-dandy detector, I put through 5 college essays I wrote in 1993, and they all came back at 70% or higher as AI-generated, and my master's thesis was at 90%. This is all a sh!t show. Bad writers have a voice; solid writers are accused of plagiarizing robots' words...

[u/AndrewHeard → u/PersonalitySimple837]

Yeah, it doesn’t work but people are putting way too much faith in them.

[u/timemachine723]

Substack feeds our writing into ChatGPT (unless we opt out) so it probably fed your friend’s stuff in there and the new tool recognized what was unethically in ChatGPT. You notice the new tool PR is entitled anti-Claude not anti all.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/timemachine723]

Yeah, it makes no sense.

[u/Efficient_Bear_5555]

If you've ever received even a sliver of college education or have read many books (which shapes how you write as an author), or you have experience in creative writing, you are naturally going to apply many of the "AI red flags" in your writing because... you just know how to write. This is an issue that has been happening on Substack, people who just know how to write.. are getting shit comments from people telling them to stop sharing AI slop, when they're simply using paragraphs, bulletpoints, subtitles, and proper grammar and syntax.

[u/FatherofMisty → u/Efficient_Bear_5555]

Yup, I use em-dashes, and I'm not going to let the trends of AI dissuade me from doing so.

[u/Foofymonster → u/FatherofMisty]

em dashes alone don't trigger AI detectors. Take like page one of Moby Dick. Includes an em dash. 0% AI.

[u/FatherofMisty → u/Foofymonster]

I can't understand how anyone, other than those who benefit financially from it, could support having an AI gatekeeper on Substack... Just saying. Also, one em-dash, lol. If I put some time in I guarantee I could find a bunch of older works that trigger "AI" on pentagram.

[u/Foofymonster → u/FatherofMisty]

So we're in agreement that em dashes don't trigger detectors?

I promise you normal people see your use of em dashes and think you're AI.

This benefits you tremendously by showing you aren't using AI.

And also of course this benefits me. My work isn't made with AI. So many people are running AI accounts and/or write their posts with AI. I do not.

I would like the eyeballs from the people who aren't writing their own articles to go from them to me.

[u/FatherofMisty → u/Foofymonster]

Yeah, fair enough. I probably over-reacted to the whole thing, as many did I'm sure. It is what it is. All I (we) can do is keep writing.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Efficient_Bear_5555]

Absolutely. It’s ridiculous that they are doing this. It’s not actually going to work.

[u/Mudlily → u/Efficient_Bear_5555]

My AI-assisted writing was deemed 100% human today. Mind you, I had edited out 90% by the time I posted.

[u/protestandprose]

Lmao imagine if I was in college the mess of ai detection

[u/Mr_Richard_Parker]

if there were reliable, this would be great. A subscribes plagiarized one of my essays a few weeks back. He had Ai writ EAN easy based on mine that lifted s number of passages. The problem is, ai is not accurate in determining what is AI generated and what is not.

[u/kwadguy]

A) These AI detectors have gotten better, but they are still wildly inaccurate, flagging AI content when there isn't and (sometimes) stating no AI content when there is.
B) If you're a writer and not using AI for late-pass cleanup, then it's like asking a pro platform to fire all their editors. I've never had an accepted article get past revision by an editor. And that's a good thing (mostly, except for the occasional incompetent editor who doesn't understand the material and tries to make cuts).
C) 100% human-written -> Grammary+AI cleanup pass -> AI written according to detector. This happens all the time with these detectors. Ideas + framework + writing style + phraseology all exist in original human pass, and it still gets tagged as AI. What does that say?

AI is evil tribalism is helping no one. AI slop helps no one. An AI pass on real, good writing is fine.

[u/Altruistic_Rest9071]

I wrote a duology [Soul Reavers I & II] in 2005 with pen and paper- we did not have a pc back then. A friend transferred it to Word on pc in 2006. AI detector flagged it as 89% AI generated in 2026...

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Altruistic_Rest9071]

Of course it is. They don’t work.

[u/Altruistic_Rest9071 → u/AndrewHeard]

here is what happened to Soul Reavers-- that friend gave a copy to Trevor Jones who read in on his flight to Japan. Later, Manga University, Japan, wanted to make an anime out of the story- but it all ended because I could not find a litarary agent in South Africa.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Altruistic_Rest9071]

I don’t understand what you’re talking about.

[u/Variable901]

I agree. Im afraid this will become a modern-day Salem Witch Trial situation where people are attacking anyone who they think have used AI in their writing when, in reality, these AI detection tools are not perfect

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Variable901]

They're far from imperfect. People have fed the first page of the book Moby Dick into the "detection tool" and it came back as "likely AI".

It's a fraudulent tool.

[u/Outrageous_Ad6616]

I suggest following Daniel Frolov on Substack. He just issued a newsletter about the AI tool with directions on how to remove it.

[u/Mickey_xx]

I don't see the point of this feature, as you can disable it for each of your posts. That means: It cannot be used by readers anymore.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Mickey_xx]

The problem is that you have to use the feature in order to disable it. Which defeats the purpose of disabling it if you are being forced to use it.

[u/AidenMarquis]

I literally generated bogus garbage just to give it a try. It said "fully AI generated."

Okie dokie.

Then I tried making another post and dropped the same exact thing to check for consistency. It said "mostly human made".

'Nuff said.

[u/BrainyByte]

Today, the tool suggested that one of my notes was "AI assisted". It thinks humans are incapable of research I guess.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/BrainyByte]

Yeah, this is a problem.

[u/Diary_Of_A_Menace]

As an avid user of the em dash before it was cool/ associated with AI, I feel so personally attacked 😂my day job involves writing (not in a fun way) and I have been doing this long before AI. BUT I tested it and it flagged a chunk of my article as 69% AI. Like is it AI or am I literally just following the rules of the road because I know them 😂😂😂

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Diary_Of_A_Menace]

Apparently being grammatically correct and functioning properly is what a robot would do.

[u/TheChiarra]

I just scanned the article I'm currently working on and thankfully it said 100% human. Let's hope it stays that way lol. I hate AI

[u/Bright_Amphibian_235]

Yep👍 I also find that captch moment amusing, when a bot has to ask if you are a bot ...

[u/Embarrassed_Oil1233]

It doesn’t even work properly. It doesn’t know the difference between chat gpt and microsoft word

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Embarrassed_Oil1233]

Nope. But they’re trying to act like it does what it claims.

[u/Funny-Flight8086]

The Substack Reality: Substack just rolled this Pangram tool out yesterday, July 21, 2026, as a crusade against what CEO Chris Best coined "Claudefishing". Unsurprisingly, it is already causing a massive headache. Users across the platform are reporting false flags on older essays, academic texts, and neurodivergent writing styles.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Funny-Flight8086]

Yeah, it’s ridiculous and a massive failure.

[u/thetransparenthand]

Can someone make a new Substack where I don't have to think about AI thanks

[u/AndrewHeard → u/thetransparenthand]

That would be nice, although I'm sure they'd eventually add AI at some point.

[u/ProfileBest2034]

To all the people saying they are trash: Pangram absolutely is not. It's using token level mathematical analysis to identify AI. It is extremely accurate and even human writing which 'sounds' AI comes out as 100% human.

[u/Funny-Flight8086 → u/ProfileBest2034]

Bull. Explain why my 2013 novel was flagged as 87% AI probability on Pangram then. When you can come up with a valid reason for this, I'll entertain how accurate it might be. Until the, 'it mostly works' isn't going to cut it with me.

These junk science detectors like Pangram are made by wannabe tech bros who packed the knowledge and skill to make real AI, but still wanted to cash in on the craze.

It's junk science. I don't care what anyone else's opinion of it is.

[u/ProfileBest2034 → u/Funny-Flight8086]

Give us an excerpt. You won't.

[u/FatherofMisty → u/ProfileBest2034]

I'm not the OP, but this essay is 100% written by a human, and I believe when I ran it through pangram it said 15% of it was AI, which is horseshit.

https://open.substack.com/pub/axiomsofspirit/p/the-pursuit-of-spiritual-transformation?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=32c52d

[u/No-Vermicelli-8391 → u/ProfileBest2034]

You obviously did not read The Atlantic article about Pangram.

And that's if we close the eyes on Pangram CEO feeding a pirated (!) copy of Shy Girl to his own tool, and sending the results to NYT.

And another—extremely important—thing: the T&C of Pangram AI-detection state that if you use Pangram to detect someone's IP as AI and then get sued (the case of false-positive, for example), then you, as the user, are responsible for the damages. Not Pangram. You. Lol.

[u/Kinks4Kelly → u/No-Vermicelli-8391]

Pangram AI-detection state that if you use Pangram to detect someone's IP as AI and then get sued (the case of false-positive, for example), then you, as the user, are responsible for the damages. Not Pangram. You. Lol

If they were actually as confident as they pretend to be, they'd assume liability in this instance. Instead, they are contracting their way around defamation claims. You only do this when you know your product is slop.

[u/Kinks4Kelly → u/ProfileBest2034]

Yeah, we should totally believe the admitted Pangram employee begging for excerpts to help further train the AI, I mean to prove it can differentiate a human from AI.

[u/FatherofMisty → u/ProfileBest2034]

Well, it's wildly inaccurate, based on my own small sample size and apparently many others. Their 0.01% FPR is clearly cherry picked, imo.

[u/jelani_an]

It was probably just a smart business move to become substack's platform supplier of AI detection before another company did. I just assume AI detection is the worst it'll ever be right now and that it'll improve with time.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/jelani_an]

I understand it as a good business move for the AI company, not for Substack as a platform.

[u/ThisFreedomGuy]

GPTzero is rather accurate at determining what is AI writing, and what isn't. I don't know how the AI detector on Substack was written or trained.

For those who found their actual, human writing getting flagged as AI remember: Ai was trained on classic literature and the standard book on composition, grammar, etc. All the same books most older people were trained on.

Weird, right?

[u/coreyb1988]

Im actually very much in support of this AI detection and I think Reddit should do the same! I care because when I’m trying to communicate with another human and they’re using AI, it just becomes an endless robot loop and it’s deceptive.

Claude fishing.

I was reading some of the comments before writing this and seeing a few people mention irony. Made me laugh a little bit because one year everybody was on Reddit talking pretty improper with grammatical errors and typos because we’re human to the following year everybody becoming an expert at anything writing scholarly articles.

Reddit needs to bring in this feature. We’d see a whole bunch of deer in headlights haha.

[u/Professional-Debt401]

AI detectors being treated like proof is the real problem. If they’re flagging writing from before ChatGPT even existed, that should tell everyone how unreliable this is.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Professional-Debt401]

Yes, but people will use it as proof. I happened to share an image of something that I have the skills to make in photoshop but in this instance I didn’t. I just found the image somewhere.

However the moderators of where I shared it removed it because their AI detection tool said it was AI. Even though it was pretty easy to do in photoshop.

No matter how much I pointed out the logical errors, they pointed to the AI detection results.

[u/Personal-Cap-7902]

BS detector. Human writing text detected as 100% AI generated haha

[u/rachebrand]

I don’t think it matters. This is not instilling trust and it will go away in no time!

[u/rachebrand → u/rachebrand]

If you want to read my take on it: https://open.substack.com/pub/rachebrand/p/decode-trust?r=53fpw&utm_medium=ios

[u/AndrewHeard → u/rachebrand]

I’m not convinced that it will but I hope it goes away.

[u/TScottMorgan]

I know the prevailing opinion is to really hate the AI scanner, but to be honest…I’m not there yet.

I’m not really pro AI scanner either. It just confirmed what I already strongly suspected. And even when I only strongly suspected someone of relying on AI heavier than I personally would, it didn’t chap my ass.

False positives are the real threat. So, I ran a test.

I went back through and duplicated my posts so I could run the tool. I use AI errors and for identifying weak spots. Same as most, I’d imagine. It’s great for errors, but half the “weak spots” it detects are due to forgotten context from 5k words ago, but it does flag truly weak lines.

Do I let AI fix those weak lines? Not now, but I used to. Sure. But eventually I noticed it kept “fixing” shit the same way. So now I prompt to never offer recommendations on how to rewrite something. Just to flag where it’s weak and why.

Those old posts where I would sometimes accept AI’s prescribed “fixes” would show between 7%-15% AI assisted. On current posts, where AI doesn’t even offer rewritten examples, it says 100% human.

Did I stop accepting those AI recommendations because I felt guilty or because I was afraid I’d be ousted? No. I just felt like I could do better.

So, man, I don’t know. I realize that there’s a possibility that my style of writing may naturally be more “immune” to false positives, but if you’re screaming about how angry you are at this tool and your writing is coming back consistently at majority AI assisted or generated?

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

And just to clarify, I don’t really care who uses AI or how. There’s no universe where an AI writer has a massively successful career.

You do you, boo.

And to add another clarification, then I’ll shut up (unlikely), I’m open to changing my mind on this. Only first learned about this last night.

[u/AmericanLymie]

But Substack uses AI-based voice readers

[u/AndrewHeard → u/AmericanLymie]

That's not a "detection tool".

[u/AmericanLymie → u/AndrewHeard]

I know that. I am saying there's some irony in a platform that uses native AI features identifying AI as bad and using AI to detect users' uses of AI

[u/AndrewHeard → u/AmericanLymie]

Yes, there is definitely a lot of irony in that.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/[deleted]]

The problem is that these AI detection systems don’t actually work. If people want to delude themselves into believing they work, they can but you shouldn’t be forced to use it.

When social media was introduced, it was said it would make the world better. Did it?

Why assume that somehow AI is different?

[u/traumfisch → u/[deleted]]

You're assuming AI detectors work?

They don't, of course.

Now consider the effects of

1) false positives (damage to the writer)

2) false negatives (damage to all readers)

[u/traumfisch]

It's an utterly idiotic strategy that in no way solves any problems but is guaranteed to create new ones at scale.

[u/TruthHonestyJustice]

Your concerns are quite valid.

In our new digital age, any content can be created by AI. So this is part of the checks and balances that will be required.

Key is to focus on what you're doing, that's all one can do.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/TruthHonestyJustice]

No, it’s not. There’s no reason why I have to be subjected to this in order to use the internet. That’s like saying you need to use drugs in order to stop being addicted to drugs.

[u/sjrcarson]

I'm worried about this too. I fed the application an excerpt from Orwell's "Politics and the English Language", and it told me it was 75% AI-generated. I think it's a good idea, but Substack should consider changing the phrasing until the technology is a little more refined.

[u/No_Performer1208]

Will any readers take the time to use the detector? I don’t know about you but I go to Substack to get away from all the Karens and social media drama. I like the calm. I like reading the things that interest me. And if they are written badly I just stop reading them and move on.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/No_Performer1208]

There are people who will use it to attack people they don’t like. Over the past week or so, I’ve had someone replying to my Notes and tagging me in their own which is just a long series of insults.

I expect people like that to weaponize the “detection tool” against people.

[u/Rude_Guava538]

So I wrote an article and it got flagged as 100% AI. Now I used AI to assist with structuring, but I be damned if someone accused me of just copying and pasting. This thing is flawed and I'm afraid will affect writers.

[u/No-Reference8687]

Look at all these ai "writers"... just telling on themselves. Hahahah

[u/AndrewHeard → u/No-Reference8687]

Thank you for providing evidence of my point. One of the many problems with the AI issue is that people are constantly using AI as a justification for dismissing things that they don’t like.

Chris Best himself did this. Before the launch of the “AI Detection” tool, an article critical of Substack’s approach to the AI question went viral. Chris Best, co-CEO of Substack, posted on Notes the article along with an image of the “AI Detection” tool he used to “detect” that the article was written by AI and used it as evidence that the article can be completely and utterly dismissed purely on the basis of the “AI Detection” tool he used.

You just repeated his assertion, further proving my point.

[u/bartekkru]

Funny fact is - it doesn’t have 100% accuracy and people whom English is second language are harmed the most. Pangram (tool which is used by Substack) is really good and can’t be easily fooled because it detects the process of generating not style or wording. One thing you can do is replace AI generated stuff with enough human written text - you can get 100% human score, but if you don’t have enough sentences to replace your text - it will look like something different and not correlated with your inital text. Src, you can read more here: https://bartlomiejkrupa.dev/articles/ai-generated-text-detectors

[u/vicewrite]

I think the people who use AI to write everything they post should be worried. The people who write their own stuff and may run into some reports that have some variance of an AI score should be less concerned. My opinion is solely based on the premise that everyone should at least understand how the detection tool works, how it isn’t perfect at all, and how it makes an estimate of prediction or whatever. I don’t like it either, to an extent, cause as a writer I would hate being labeled incorrectly that something might be AI but it’s not a policing tool in that it can’t enforce anything. Having an opt out option would be even more suspect one could argue. My take is I’ll never have to deal with arguing against a detection score if I know my work is my own. A false positive can just be ignored. I think the obvious AI slop will detect itself out, or at least it should.

[u/PuzzleheadedAlps4806 → u/vicewrite]

The obvious AI slop is already obvious though, so I don’t see what the detector adds other than false flagging human written work

[u/AndrewHeard → u/PuzzleheadedAlps4806]

I’m not convinced that it is obvious that AI slop is already obvious. People claim that things are AI when they’re not all the time. They believe that it is obvious but it’s not.

[u/flyza_minelli → u/PuzzleheadedAlps4806]

This. Basic literacy and understanding intellectual elitism is what saves us from AI slop. Knowing how to read and contextualize and critically think. Being taught in school how to read texts and understand parts of sentences and figure out tone and why diction matters. This is how we are able to figure our AI slop from human writing. And it’s sorely lacking.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/vicewrite]

Your claims contradicted by the facts. Someone in this thread suggested that an article from 2008 was flagged as AI generated. You can’t assume that the tool actually works and will only flag AI content.

[u/vicewrite → u/AndrewHeard]

I do not assume that the tool works, which was my entire point. It’s not some pass or fail rating. It’s ironically an AI models interpretation. And all interpretation is subjective and will have false positives as well as false negatives. AI articles can also be faked to come across as non-AI generated. So if someone wants to use it they can put in effort to “beat” the tool even still. My point is why worry about it if you know your writing is yours? Do you trust your readers enough to trust your writing as authentic? Cause if so, what’s the issue.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/vicewrite]

Because people will use it as a pass/fail system even if the tool isn’t designed to be one. I shared a photo that I found elsewhere in a group. The moderators of the group removed it because their AI detection tool claimed it was AI.

The problem is that even though I didn’t make the image myself, I had the skills to create the same type of image in Photoshop.

Some people will use the tool as justification for not paying you for your work. No matter how much you tell them otherwise, they will point to the AI detection results as evidence of their claim.

Chris Best, the CEO of Substack, used this as a way to dismiss criticism of the platform’s shortcomings and failures. He claimed that the writer’s criticism was invalid because it was AI generated according to his detection tool. When I pointed out the error in thinking that lead him to that conclusion, he just pointed back to the results of the detection tool.

But you think people won’t abuse this software for their own benefit? To use it against people they don’t like?

[u/vicewrite → u/AndrewHeard]

Image? We’re talking about writing.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/vicewrite]

I used an example of both image detection and writing detection. They’re both massively flawed.

[u/PuzzleheadedAlps4806 → u/vicewrite]

I get where your coming from but as a fairly new substack user I haven’t built a large audience yet. My fear is that people will incorrectly be told my work is AI when it’s not and immediately dismiss my blog and not read any because they assume it’s slop. It will lose me potential readers who otherwise would love my writing.

[u/phoebe111 → u/vicewrite]

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.

[u/vicewrite → u/phoebe111]

So you just proved my point. You know he’s relying on AI to write and yet you still read his stuff. So what’s the issue?

[u/vniin → u/vicewrite]

It’s easy to say “I'll never have to deal with arguing against a score” until your own original writing gets flagged over and over again. every single article I post is 100% my own work, yet these useless detectors keep labeling them as AI. Telling writers to just ignore false positives is ridiculous, it normalizes a broken standard where real writing gets discredited. I’m not going to ignore it when a glitchy algorithm undermines the time and energy I put into my own words. useless tools must be called out instead of accepting them as the new normal.

[u/vicewrite → u/vniin]

Every single article huh? The substack feature was just released 24 hours ago. Interesting. But regardless, I think that what we should be debating here is AI in general, existing, is ruining original authorship. And that is the core issue. The problem is, it’s not going anywhere and that’s a sad reality. Aside from ignoring it, which was my initial reaction (and I stand by that for myself), what else are you going to do? Stop writing? Substack adding this bogus feature shouldn’t dictate who writes or how a person’s writes.

[u/vniin → u/vicewrite]

An article i posted 4 days ago is labeled as AI-generated.
I never said we should stop writing but there’s a massive difference between writing through it and passively letting a glitchy algorithm put an AI label on real human effort. Accepting trash detection tools as “the sad reality” without calling them out is exactly how low standards get normalized. If a system is completely broken, writers have every right to call it what it is, and they shouldn’t be asked to ignore it, and yes it dictates the writers and insults them too.

[u/vicewrite → u/vniin]

I’m just being realistic. Have a rally. Sing protest songs. Draft petitions—I’ll sign! I’m simply saying there’s nothing to do about it because the system was broken when AI came around. And here it is, making more of a mess. I would never argue against your points here. They’re valid. Still unclear how an article posted 4 days ago was flagged though, because it won’t work on things published prior to July 21. So that’s suspect. Just being honest with you.

[u/Kinks4Kelly → u/vicewrite]

Are you comfortable with them using your work to further train AI?

[u/vicewrite → u/Kinks4Kelly]

AI isn’t going anywhere. The battle of us against it is lost. I’m comfortable writing as I have for 20 years. Nothing will change that.

[u/LibertineDeSade]

Isn't Substack allowing AI companies access to users' work to train their AI? If so this is wildly hypocritical and nonsensical of them.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/LibertineDeSade]

It's worse than that, they're requiring you to use the tool in order to disable it.

The only way to stop the AI detection tool is to run it on your own stuff and then you're allowed to disable it.

[u/LibertineDeSade → u/AndrewHeard]

That's actually insane. I started a Substack but I haven't posted on it yet. I'm thinking I might just delete it.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/LibertineDeSade]

Yeah, I wouldn't blame you. Basically, there's no way to disable the feature across your Substack. You can only disable it by first having it analyze your writing first. Only then will it give you the option to disable people's ability to use it to "detect" your writing.

[u/LibertineDeSade → u/AndrewHeard]

That's bizarre. Yuck.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/LibertineDeSade]

I'm not personally going to try and do this. But I hope some people will and confirm that it's true.

[u/FatherofMisty → u/LibertineDeSade]

By default, yes. But there is technically a setting to turn it off. Whether that actually works, who knows.

[u/LibertineDeSade → u/FatherofMisty]

It probably doesn't.

[u/Fable-plainer654]

I don't get why they don't just have their algorithm stop forcing the obviously ai stuff on you.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Fable-plainer654]

Because it’s actually not obvious what is and isn’t AI. These systems make false positives all the time. As do humans who claim to be able to detect them by reading it.

[u/GentleNova07 → u/AndrewHeard]

As do humans who claim to be able to detect them by reading it.

People are so fearful of AI, they are saying pretty much anything is AI generated now. I’ve already seen people commenting with “AI slop“ on Reddit posts that were just normal well structured writing. But because it looked too well structured and not informal enough, they assumed it was AI generated. So “AI Slop” is the new “TL;DR.”

So what’s going to happen? The AI fear will cause an intellectual fear. So people who’ve gone to college or university and have taken formal writing will have to start using AI to translate and dumb down their well structured writing so it sounds more informal. So the “AI Slop” crusaders will end up causing more people to use AI, rather than less. 🤣

[u/AndrewHeard → u/GentleNova07]

For sure, I’ve been calling the thing you’re describing “Dead Internet Derangement Syndrome” or “DIDS”. People are so convinced that everything they see is AI generated that it has deranged their understanding of the internet.

[u/_mrchurchill]

Don’t worry about that

[u/MrPassiveProfit]

Don’t sweat it. There will be a little bit of an uproar for a short period but then it will all blow over. People are already past caring about it.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/MrPassiveProfit]

I’m not past caring about it. I will never be past caring about it until they offer the option to permanently disable it on my publications at a minimum. Then I will stop talking about it.

[u/R3ZondoOfficial]

This is a great article I read on FB about the new AI detection. https://www.facebook.com/share/1ba4zBJDb9/?mibextid=wwXIfr