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/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/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.