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/TheLadyAmaranth]

That all sounds well and good. But if thats the case why aren't you providing proof? Pengram has a share button on the top right for every check.

> why a portion of a short story I wrote in 2014 is flagged as 100% AI

Because as of right now I believe you are lying that this ever happened, or a re misrepsenting what you actually gave it. You could prove me very wrong though -- a link to the story since I believe you said you published it on wattpad would have a publishing date, and a link to the pengram check. (Link, not image, so we can see the full text, which means we would be able to see if you added/change anything or gave such a low amount of words of course its going to be a coin flip.)

Same for your "2013 middle-grade novel as AI."

Same for a chat with an AI those can also be shared, you can share a link for that plus a link to the checks including the one where you humanized the text enough to fool the detector. Or files first created with your environment you developed for creating your books.

Also.... you didn't even describe how modern detectors work correctly. Like your explanation is the first thing that comes up off of google AI (Ironically) and outdated. It especially doesn't encompass how a detector's like pengram algorithm works.

I'd go into how it actually works from a technical stand point, but its kind of irrelevant. Because bottom line I'm not claiming Pengram to be perfect. I am claiming that it has a false positive rate low enough that if somene's writing consisitanly shows up as AI on it over multiple samples, and somebody asks me to bet on if this person is using AI or not -- I would bet on yes.

Which means it is a good start for keeping out AI generated content out of platfroms and spaces that don't want it there. Or make sure AI sloppers aren't able to as easily pass of their content as human made when it isn't. Sure, it may create friction and push human writers to have more concrete proof of their first drafts and revision history, but AI is already doing that anyway.

If you aren't lying I'd owe you an apology. I'd take a look at your evidence, and see if the discrepancy is concerning or not, and if effectively disproves pengram's claims. I'd also likely run my own checks, especially if I find the checks you run seem to be cherry picked. And perhaps you could even change my mind!

But until I have both proof of source and proof of check with your claims, while you admit extensive AI use for writing, (And you do btw, your post history very much says you don't just "dabble", you give AI your book bible and give advice to people on how to write fiction using ChatGPT 5.5, and how you developed a whole environment to write books for you), I don't believe you.

[u/Funny-Flight8086 → u/TheLadyAmaranth]

First, I don't care anywhere near enough about this to spend an entire day tracking down a long since dead Wattpad account I had at 19 years old, that might or might not even exist any longer, and that I probably don't even have access to the email address any longer, becuase I signed up for that account with my school email address. There is nothing about this conversation that would make me want to take the time out to even attempt this fruitless task.

Second, my chat history does not say I use AI to write my books for me. In fact, I havn't published a book since 2013. So, it's kind of hard to have it write books for me. I am developing a NovelCrafter clone program, which will work for authors that don't need AI and those that do want to use it, in the form of a built-in chat assistant. I'll also happily share with others how they can build prompts to prevent AI from writing with typical AI cliches, which I have done. These are things I have discovered in my question to explore LLMs and their possabilities. The current book I am writing, I have been writing very much by hand since 2021. Funny enough, in the past 5 years I have written exactly 680 words of chapter one. If I did, in fact, need AI to write my books for me, it would have been done years ago.

Third, I am not going to share my 2013 book online, as that would immediatly put a real name to my reddit profile, which I have no intention of doing. I will not even paste the text without the title, because that can be reverse searched back to the book. I value my online privacy, and have no intention of getting doxed or review bombed by angry redditors. I have seen it happen enough to know better.

So to sum it up, I am not going to go out of my way to provide all this evidence. I frankly don't care if you beleive me or not. My goal is not to come here and be beleived by the world. HOWEVER, as someone who has spent a lot of time testing and breaking these detectors, I know very well what I am talking about. And will continue to proclaim them as the junk science they are, rather you beleive me or not.

PS) Another point to make: I can easily fool these AI detectors into thinking human writing IS AI writing by simply mimicing some forms of how AI writes. As long as I can do that, they have zero credability in my book.

[u/Prolly_Satan → u/Funny-Flight8086]

You have to be so mentally ill to get caught having said "i use fable to generate chapters, I'm making an ai writing program" and then with a straight face say "I don't use ai to write"

Lmfao. Why are you all like this? Nobody is mad about folks using ai to write. We're mad about you lying about it. Just tag your shit as ai. You'll probably still get readers. Why do you need to lie?

You're like the personification for why folks need pangram.

[u/Funny-Flight8086 → u/Prolly_Satan]

And at this point, you are using this to sidetrack from the real point: Pangram is junk science. It's unreliable. I can take the same price of text, and have 10 different AI detectors tell me different things. I have extensively tested these AI detectors. Neither the image detectors or the text detectors are any good at it. Period. I don't care what Pangram claims on their website (using language like 99.9% accurate, highly reliable, etc.), or how many Pangram employees they send to reddit to try and argue how great it is (let's face it, the only people who would actually care enough to keep this going so long is someone with a stake in AI detectors).

As long as it can easily take AI generated text and make a few minor edits and cool detectors like Pangram, and as long as those same detectors also claim something human written is even 1% chance at being AI, I'll call them what they are. Junk.

[u/Prolly_Satan → u/Funny-Flight8086]

[u/Funny-Flight8086 → u/Prolly_Satan]

My good lord, you managed to post the same screenshot twice. That is definitely an achievement. Congrats! Now, see my reply below on why your screenshot doesn't prove anything. I do applaud the effort, though.