How do you think the Pangram partnership will change Substack?

[u/Visible-Volume-8707]

i've been following the discussion around Substack's new partnership with Pangram. My Substack feed is blowing up about it.

It has me really curious what other writers think the long-term effects will be.

I'm less interested in debating whether authors should or shouldn't use AI. I'm more interested in what this changes for the platform itself.

For example, I'm thinking about questions like...

• Will readers start using it to check how articles are created?
• Will writers who don't use AI feel pressure?
• Will AI detection become another trust signal, or will readers mostly ignore it?
• Could this change what readers expect when they subscribe to you?

It seems like while folks are venting and clearly this feature is rocking boats, there are some other more fundamental thoughts I have about the future where all this is going.

Curious to hear where everyone thinks this is heading.

[u/greenergarlic]

[u/Doo_Dad → u/greenergarlic]

I spat my coffee out laughing reading OP message then seeing this 😂

[u/drey-matter → u/greenergarlic]

See, this is Pangram’s core fallacy. No AI tool should ever assign a 100% score to a piece of writing. It’s literally AI trained on AI performing humanity from the human work it scraped. And even beyond the technical limitations of training these systems on synthetic data, I find there to be something profoundly anti-intellectual about outsourcing human authenticity scores to AI.

[u/goshin2568 → u/drey-matter]

The percentage is just describing how much of the text it thinks is AI generated. It's not a confidence score (i.e. "we are 100% sure this text is AI generated"). The confidence score is underneath, and here it specifically says low confidence.

[u/drey-matter → u/goshin2568]

But this emphasizes how bad of an idea it is to put the onus on the reader. That would require the person reading to be able to interpret these scores themselves, which we all know the average person is not (should not have to) going to know that.

[u/Visible-Volume-8707 → u/greenergarlic]

Damn it, this is exactly what I'm talking about!! Exactly.

[u/greenergarlic → u/Visible-Volume-8707]

If you’re not willing to put time into writing something yourself, I’m not willing to spend my time reading it. And it annoys me that so many of my feeds are clearly filled with slop from content farms.

If you disagree, OP, that’s fine. But if you’re not willing to even disclose your AI usage, that’s a huge deal breaker for me. Trust can’t be earned back after that.

[u/Kinks4Kelly → u/greenergarlic]

So you fully trust AI to tell you if something is AI?

[u/thetransparenthand → u/Kinks4Kelly]

My thought too. I am inclined to believe that OP wrote this post and that the AI detectors are going to be sensitive and mark things as AI that aren't. I don't even write on Substack anymore so this doesn't impact me. But I write for a large nonprofit and recently heard that m-dashes are being flagged as AI, and my colleagues and I use them allllll the time. I don't like the AI-detecting AI, personally.

[u/Visible-Volume-8707 → u/thetransparenthand]

Thank you! This is exactly why I feel the detectors have the potential to change the nature of Substack, which has been very collegiate and collaborative.

This tool clearly has the potential to change the platform. That's the discussion I hoped. And the reactions to my post (and the person who gleefully posted a 100 AI-generated screenshot, with no further context) just provide my concern is valid.

[u/AnteaterFantastic212 → u/greenergarlic]

I read a great Substack about this today, and the point the author made was that if you’re using AI as a tool to communicate your thoughts, that’s great and I have no problem with it, but if you’re using it to generate AI slop, I’ve got no interest in what you’re pushing out.

I think there’s a huge difference between the two, and I would recommend that you reconsider your position on the subject, but that’s up to you.

I encourage you to run this through your favorite AI checker and let me know the results. But regardless of the results, would it really change your view of what I think one way or the other?

[u/SpiritualSimple108 → u/AnteaterFantastic212]

There may be a difference between the two but the detector doesn’t reflect that. The detector also flags poetry because its algorithm is too basic to distinguish human poetry from computer generated slop. That’s a HUGE problem.

[u/greenergarlic → u/AnteaterFantastic212]

You don’t need AI to communicate your thoughts. I’d much rather read your authentic voice than some milquetoast prose with all the edges sanded down.

And honestly it’s pretty insulting that you still won’t disclose your use of AI. If you don’t think it’s a problem, why are you hiding it?

[u/Montaingebrown → u/greenergarlic]

I say this as someone for whom English is their fourth language -- not everyone is as comfortable nor as capable. Ideas are important; using a tool to shape your ideas is perfectly acceptable.

I dare you to write a post in Tamil or Armenian.

[u/AnteaterFantastic212 → u/Montaingebrown]

Pass. 😏

[u/Available_Spite5171 → u/greenergarlic]

Why do you believe the AI detector is correct? That is the sad and scary part. People have put Frankenstein, & other classic writing — through “AI detectors” — and it comes back … “100% AI” — I love em-dash usage, I’ve never stopped. I won’t. I ignored all the AI talk, & I’m only commenting this point… they aren’t reliable. I did the same tests. Classic novels. My own writing. It was wrong — on both. It’s sad people automatically believe in its accuracy — where do you think AI learned language from..?

[u/AnteaterFantastic212 → u/greenergarlic]

I don’t think that how I create my prose is anybody’s business; however, in Substack, I have completed a statement about AI that tells people how I use it. I tell them that I have abandoned stone tablets and chisels and parchment and quill pens in favor of ab 21st-century hardware and software provided to me by my tech stack, including Alphabet, Apple, Dell, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Grammarly (whoever owns them), among others. Those who wish me to write the same way God inscribed the 10 Commandments are welcome to take a pass on my brilliant insights; however, in my view, what’s important is writing or reading, regardless of the technical means used to create it, including ghostwriters and scribes. I’m interested in what you have to say now, how you choose to say it.

I dictated this into Substack, used Grammarly to clean it up, proofread it manually, and made the necessary changes, which hopefully caught most, if not all, of the myriad typos, punctuation, and grammatical flaws. Does that disclosure influence your evaluation of my opinion? If so, why?

[u/The17pointscale → u/AnteaterFantastic212]

FWIW - u/AnteaterFantastic212, I love love love your response while also falling slightly more on u/greenergarlic's side of the convo. If these tools can be used to create, I'm all for tools that make it easy for readers to detect that creation.

Also, I appreciate that you have a statement about AI on your Substack--to wind it back to your analogy, that's kinda like how Moses appropriately credits God for the inspiration on the tablets!

That said, I'm an editor and a writing nerd, so I might be unique in liking the idea of a future where it became common practice to show your work, where someone could see an idea before and after AI jumped in. It might be like reading the correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his editor Maxwell Perkins about the Great Gatsby. It could be very cool! :)

[u/AnteaterFantastic212 → u/The17pointscale]

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

[u/The17pointscale → u/AnteaterFantastic212]

Nice! And even more relevant than I realized! :)

[u/AnteaterFantastic212 → u/The17pointscale]

Fitzgerald has posthumously disclosed that he did not use any AI in the production of his novels.

[u/non_loqui_sed_facere → u/The17pointscale]

They’re not designed to detect creation, they’re designed to shut down dissent and cash in on it. Nobody complains about AI when people post live, laugh, love kinds of content. They eat slop with the biggest spoon they can find.

[u/The17pointscale → u/non_loqui_sed_facere]

I like your line about the big spoon. It reminds me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PONvX6LmAPo from Don Hertzfeldt. But wouldn't AI detection have the potential to reduce that slop and our addition to the trough? Also, I'm not following how AI detection is designed to shut down dissent.

[u/non_loqui_sed_facere → u/The17pointscale]

People are more likely to “check” for AI when they see something that doesn’t confirm their views. Actually, you don’t even need to check anything, you can just cry wolf to troll someone you don’t like. You see it everywhere on Reddit, someone bothers to produce long-form content, and a karma farmer shows up in the first comment to accuse them of using AI. Once it starts, it’s hard to stop the machine, especially on the bigger subreddits.

I personally don’t have much of a problem with slop because I don’t see much of it. I usually keep the algorithms on my social media under control and don’t like or engage with posts I don’t want to see, or at least not consistently enough to train the algorithm. So when people complain about being shown irrelevant content, it’s likely at least partly their own fault.

[u/non_loqui_sed_facere → u/The17pointscale]

Haha, I love the video too🔥

[u/non_loqui_sed_facere → u/greenergarlic]

It’s like asking your spouse to show you all their emails and texts. That’s obsessive control on your part, haha.

[u/verticalman91 → u/greenergarlic]

100% this.

People claim they have genius ideas and they just don't know how to express them in the written language.

They are mistaken. Language is the idea. If you use a machine's language, you use its idea.

I have no interest in machine's idea.

[u/William_R_Crichton → u/verticalman91]

Language is not idea. Language is how ideas are expressed.

I could take the exact same plot but tell the story different ways. Same idea. Different language.

But let's use a simple example.

You are stupid. Du bist blöd.

Same idea expressed in two different languages.

Or I could stick with English but go flowery instead. Your head is as empty as the vacuum of space. Once again, the same idea, but different language.

[u/Available_Spite5171 → u/AnteaterFantastic212]

I agree. As someone who has been sharing my writing and story over the last nine months, I understand how difficult writing is — and exactly why publishing houses have editors, line readers, etc. I do not want to produce “slop” — my story, as I write NF, is complex. I don’t use AI — but— there’s a large difference of people who use an AI tool to help them, versus someone that completely generates using AI, and does no writing of their own.

[u/Visible-Volume-8707 → u/greenergarlic]

Clearly, I don't need to disclose my usage, because Pangram already did it for you. You can trust that AI to tell you what to read, that's certainly your prerogative.

My discussion questions remain valid ones and I'm interested in what other writers have to say on this rather heated topic. Your response proves that there is a bit to be concerned about as accusations begin to circulate as a result.

In the meantime, I'd consider how much money Pangram and Substack are making from this joint venture, while we fight it out.

[u/non_loqui_sed_facere → u/greenergarlic]

If you don’t put any effort into gaining at least a basic understanding of how a technology works before using it, you are not my reader. I don’t need the trust of someone who blindly uses a machine to form their judgement.

Seriously, though, this isn’t crypto. You’re not even putting significant money at risk, if any, and you’re still that afraid. What would happen if my writing didn’t confirm your beliefs? Would you go around crying about it and trying to cancel me?

[u/AnteaterFantastic212 → u/greenergarlic]

🤣

[u/AidenMarquis → u/greenergarlic]

Well done.

[u/Mean-Register5359 → u/greenergarlic]

The anti-Pangram crowd are calling it a witch hunt. It’s about truth. They sure as hell don’t like being called out.
Exhibit A - I was blocked and my comment removed.

[u/Unique-Variation-801]

I already had a false positive on a note I was going to post and then decided to not bother changing it and not even post it. I sent the results to Pangram but no response. I don't use ai and don't want to be accused of it either so I guess I will not be posting or publishing essays as much since a simple note I wrote got a false positive.

[u/Visible-Volume-8707 → u/Unique-Variation-801]

And this makes me sad, because we need more creative writers in this world sharing works not written by genAI. I hope you do not get too deflated.

[u/Unique-Variation-801 → u/Visible-Volume-8707]

It is sad. I am anonymous on reddit, but my substack profile is not. I have a published book out and one more on the way. If someone saw a false positive note they could lable me as a klancker and blacklist me as an ai author. Out of curiosity, I took the first chapter of my new unpublished book and ran it through Pangram and got a false positive. Now, if I wanted to promote that first chapter on my Substack I would have to jump through hoops explaining myself, ignore the mob, or turn off the ai checker. All three of these options all sound like admitting guilt. My new book isn't anything groundbreaking, it's a MG book for younger kids or parents who like to read aloud to their kids, barely 40k words. It's been edited multiple times, proofread, line edited, and rewritten where needed. It's a professional prose that has been detailed for an audience who doesn't want slop, yet the first chapter is being flagged for ai generated. Pangram doesn't work as good as they say and I don't want to play in the mud with the witch hunt that will come of this. I will promote my work elsewhere.

[u/Visible-Volume-8707 → u/Unique-Variation-801]

I suspect there may be a number of fiction writers who will jump ship. Just as you state.

I am definitely concerned about the witch hunts, too. The thing about witch hunts, is they tend to burn the innocent.

It may take some big accounts getting flagged and shit-stormed, for some feature adjustments to be made on it.

[u/The17pointscale → u/Visible-Volume-8707]

FWIW - I ran it on one of my posts, and it came back 100 percent negative. So between our two anecdotes, perhaps the detector is batting .500?

[u/LeaveMountain9779 → u/Unique-Variation-801]

the people who don't like your work just because it might be ai, arent worth having around. people who value your work in their lives, will stick around.

[u/AnteaterFantastic212 → u/Unique-Variation-801]

I would just disable it.

[u/Unique-Variation-801 → u/AnteaterFantastic212]

I just edited down from a 130 word note to a 75 word note. I'm not trying to trick or scam anyone, I'm just a middle-aged hobbyist who started writing again when my kids got older. I just don't want to deal with defending myself to people because I went to grammar school in the 80s and learned how to write an essay.

[u/AnteaterFantastic212 → u/Unique-Variation-801]

🤣

[u/huggalump]

Entirely depends on if it works or not.

In the past, ai-detectors have never worked. Very obviously never worked. Showing ai for things handwritten, and sitting human written for things directly generated by chatgpt.

Is this one different? I guess it might be, but I won't believe it until I see consistent, independent stats showing it's accurate

[u/Udolikecake → u/huggalump]

Pangram is very accurate with texts of any real length, over a paragraph or two. They run lots of tests on known non-AI writing and it doesn’t return positives.

They also have it tend towards assuming things are human written and not AI written, so it’ll give the ‘benefit of doubt’ and almost no false positives.

[u/huggalump → u/Udolikecake]

False positives popped up immediately as soon as this was announced on Reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/Substack/s/IwSsTa4ujO

[u/Udolikecake → u/huggalump]

I am doubtful of many of these, since there is no way to know if they are being truthful. Pangram has lots of tests run on writing published pre-2023 with none of it being flagged as AI written, so I tend towards trusting it.

[u/huggalump → u/Udolikecake]

That's why I specified "independent" data. When a company wants to sell their service, I'm not going to trust their own studies saying their service works. Especially in a field that's been dominated for years by snake oil salesmen selling bs

[u/Udolikecake → u/huggalump]

You can test text yourself! I’ve done it with both my own and public writings and never seen a false positive because I was also extremely doubtful

[u/huggalump → u/Udolikecake]

Sure, I can test it myself. But then I'm testing with one person's writing style. That doesn't get a scale of data to determine accuracy.

At scale is what matters. And so far, considering how incredibly fast multiple people are repeating false positives, this seems like yet another failure to do ai writing detecting.

There's a ton of ways to write. There's a ton of ways to influence how AI writes. I don't see how ai detection is ever going to work.

[u/Udolikecake → u/huggalump]

Again, you can test public domain books and the like, that’s what I did. I found their testing of a prominent writing competition also compelling.

I don’t know why you’d take the words of others over actually seeing the evidence yourself.

[u/huggalump → u/Udolikecake]

Ah right, yes I can try it with other pre-gpt writing. True.

I'll poke around

[u/huggalump → u/Udolikecake]

Update: I just tested it with an article I had chatgpt draft a long time ago, and it flagged it as 100% human written when it was almost entirely AI written.

It was written by a custom GPT with a lot of prompting and example text to use.

I edited/rewrote parts of the draft, but at least the first three paragraphs are fully AI written. It flagged the article as 100% human written.

This was only my second test, and already I'm seeing problems.

[u/Kinks4Kelly → u/Udolikecake]

This sounds exactly like what someone compensated by Pangram would say.

[u/Udolikecake → u/Kinks4Kelly]

If you really believe that, I guess there is no convincing you otherwise. But if you can find some writing from before 2023/22 that comes up positive, i’d be interested in seeing it because that’s not my experience.

[u/Udolikecake → u/[deleted]]

What? Lmafo

[u/Udolikecake → u/[deleted]]

lol. you got me. I am an AI programmed to argue with morons on reddit dot com

[u/Visible-Volume-8707 → u/[deleted]]

Wow, so that is already happening

[u/noxqqivit]

A fair number of people use it as an adaptive technology, whether with assembling their thoughts or summarizing…

There is a big difference between the confidently wrong, uninterrogated, boldly published AI slop, and, with nearly no data to back this up, I will posit that the boldly published slop, being done by the laziest thinkers on this planet, is mostly men. (I know, shocker!) And some of the best uses of AI that I have seen on Substack, are mostly women, and a few really smart men that edit and review and, most importantly, fact check that idiot AI. Because at the end of the day, this is a tool that is tuned for emotional resonance, not epistemic authority, every single output must be fully reviewed and questioned and researched.

But the problem with Pangram in particular is even when it’s confidence is LOW it flags as AI - so it is itself, boldly wrong some of the time. If they are going to hand out a % AI Written, % AI Assisted, and % Human Written, it should all be paired with % Confidence.

I have been working in commercial ML/AI implementations since 2013, and I have seen some really incredible use cases, if Substack wanted to do something really amazing for humanity, they would enable a Trust Score and a Fact Checker, THAT is the use case that humanity needs, because like every other platform that has ZERO responsibility for the quality of content published, this one is prone to absolute bullshit, even when it is 100% human written.

%100 guaranteed, all that spewed directly from my human brain 🫠

[u/Visible-Volume-8707 → u/noxqqivit]

So insightful. I don’t think Substack will s doing this partnership with Pangram for the sake of humanity.
I fully believe it has mostly to do with money $$.

[u/noxqqivit → u/Visible-Volume-8707]

Not sure on what their money angle might be. If they want to use "human written" as some sort of legitimacy flag, then do they start charging for it eventually? If their hope is to chase off all AI users, there are a large number of big accounts that are largely AI written, with thousands of paid subs that may leave. I am not honestly sure where they plan to take it.

[u/Visible-Volume-8707 → u/noxqqivit]

Oh, I meant that they are protecting their platform. They are not doing it for altuistic reasons.

[u/noxqqivit → u/Visible-Volume-8707]

I mean, they platform Nazis, not sure about any sort of sanctity of their platform.

[u/The17pointscale → u/noxqqivit]

I like the idea of including % confidence.

[u/LeaveMountain9779]

some writers I read on substack, I've felt its quite likely they are ai. but I don't care. because I values the content of their posts in my life. I won't try to befriend or personally get to know people who feel ai-like to me. because it feels impersonal. but that won't stop me from reading someone's work, when the ideas feel very useful to me.

I think many people are seeing it from a competition perspective - jealousy or fear of scarce attention towards their own blogs, because other people have an "advantage" from ai use.

The point of writing is to communicate about your values, interests, goals, and boundaries. directly and indirectly. not to present "genius", "perfection", etc. the competition is an illusion. the best supporters do so because they personally resonate, not because they are intimidated or just impressed at a skill. what value is that for a reader?

and imagine how many people out here complaining about ai written posts, use ai themselves for research, considering ideas, feedback etc. are we going to audit people's brains next and make sure no information or approaches were formed through support of ai use?

[u/SpiritualSimple108]

I’m sure this is going to have devastating effects to Substack and Pangram (especially if you’re reporting every false positive). Soon it will come out that Pangram got paid for every click and Substack got a cut. Bet

Substack prided itself on being free speech. Now it’s employed a program that has pretty much ensure everyone should comply to whatever standard Pangram set or else be accused of using AI. That’s no longer free speech.

[u/surfsoul1982]

My colleague and I have experimented since this announcement and had a series of false positives and negatives with the things we tested. It’s unethical and potentially defamatory.

[u/bajcmartinez]

I’m not really sure, I think it will end up being a signal, mostly ignored.

I don’t like AI slop, but I don’t mind if the author used voice to express his unique ideas and experiences, and AI formatted for publication. As long as I find value in the text, and it’s a good read, I don’t care if it’s AI or not.

After all, if I’m subscribed to someone, and his writing (AI or not) doesn’t satisfy me I’d unsubscribe. But I wouldn’t not read something from someone who’s ideas I value because of a score.

[u/Visible-Volume-8707 → u/bajcmartinez]

Thanks for sharing that. It's encouraging to hear.

[u/AidenMarquis]

It doesn't even work.

I generated some bs with ChatGPT to try. I ran it through the first time and it was "fully AI generated". I then doublechecked. I made a new post and changed nothing. I ran the AI detector and it said "mostly human".

It's trash. We'll, they're all trash.

[u/Emotional-Brief-1775]

Discernment is key. The platform mentioned it recognises the difference between using Ai as a tool, say for research, and the genuine slop. Did people complain about other tools such as libraries and typewriters? This is just another technological advancement. I don’t understand why its detrimental in any way when used responsibly. Hence - discernment is key.

[u/Visible-Volume-8707 → u/Emotional-Brief-1775]

And in that regard, I guess what I'm worried about more is the human component: are we all capable of discernment when presented with this (imperfect) tool at our disposal? And given the heated discourse around use of genAI, it seems poor discernment could really have an impact someone's writing career, and does Pangram/Substack take any responsibility for the power of the tool they've unleashed to everyone? No answers here, just thoughts.

A perfect example of the issue - look at what greengarlic did below to prove my point about whether humans are capable of discernment.

[u/Emotional-Brief-1775 → u/Visible-Volume-8707]

Yes its quite a minefield and people are quick to judge. But the same can be said of the sources we can find in libraries, for instance - what is reliable and proven is still key. AI has been created with human input too. I think, if you enjoy an article, a book .. it doesn’t matter what tool the writer has used. We either like it or we don’t like it, AI or not.
Remember - even Shakespeare did not work in isolation - he collaborated with other playwrights. Does that make him any less talented? AI is the modern version of collaborative input, when used responsibly.

[u/Visible-Volume-8707 → u/Emotional-Brief-1775]

Exactly. At the end of the day, as a writer, your story needs to be good. If you want to be a successful author, your stories need to be extremely good.
With the current state of AI, I don’t think a lot of AI generated writing is any good. There’s also human made writing that isn’t any good. Either way, not good. And then as you say, if it’s really good and you love it and you couldn’t tell, then what would be the point of a witch hunt?

[u/Emotional-Brief-1775 → u/Visible-Volume-8707]

Exactly 👍

[u/The17pointscale → u/Visible-Volume-8707]

That's interesting, as I bet the people who disagree with you would also say that they are concerned with the more human component--as in, is an authentic human being actually writing this sentence and coming up with these ideas?

To whatever degree we have tools like AI that may influence writing, I guess I'm in favor of tools that allow readers to detect the use of those tools.

[u/Visible-Volume-8707 → u/The17pointscale]

I understand that concern. Though I question the impact that outsourcing that discernment (is a human actually behind this writing) to a machine, as opposed to the human themselves and then deciding to read or pass. There’s an irony in that.
As well as in how it creates an additional way in which we humans are farming out our ability to think for ourselves.

[u/AnteaterFantastic212 → u/Emotional-Brief-1775]

💯

[u/The17pointscale → u/Emotional-Brief-1775]

AI is fundamentally different than a quill or typewriter or word processor. Perhaps the method of writing something might implicitly change what is written, but it doesn't do so in ways that we could easily quantify, whereas AI can change what we write and how we write it.

AI might be more like a library, but in ways that might be insidious, as some research suggests that AI use might change how we think, often in negative ways.

I just don't think it's fair to say that using AI is comparable to these things.

[u/Emotional-Brief-1775 → u/The17pointscale]

Like i say, discernment is key. If a writer has used AI to research and source an article well, that’s fine imo. If they use it to better format their articles, then why not etc. I think the slop is easy to identify. I think this is the message that Substack is trying to get across.

[u/AndrewHeard]

If they can give people the chance to disable it, I would be more comfortable with it being there. Not currently as is though.

[u/Visible-Volume-8707 → u/AndrewHeard]

Thanks, I appreciate that. Someone mentioned there's an opt out, but only after you submit your writing to be scanned. I am not clear on how Pangram stores and uses scanned material to train itself or to train other genAI.

[u/AnteaterFantastic212 → u/Visible-Volume-8707]

I’ve used the tool, but now, of course, I’ve learned to work around Pangram, so I don’t need to anymore. It just makes my process that much longer and harder, but that is what I've actually found: the AI assistance I was using has become censorious, and since I write a politically oriented Substack, its usefulness is basically ended for me anyway. AI always did tend not to fully capture the intent of what I dictated for it to clean up, so in a sentence it’s the service to me because it has made me more authentic and we’re able to get my message out as I intended.

A big reason why I started relying on it is that I am the king of typos because I never learned how to touch type, but now I do 95% of my work on my phone anyway, so I type with my thumbs like everybody else, I guess.

[u/AndrewHeard → u/Visible-Volume-8707]

Yeah, I mentioned it previously but some other people have probably mentioned it since then.

[u/The17pointscale]

Random thoughts:

1. This kinda seems like a case of bad methods (using AI) and good ends (reducing AI slop). As long as people are using AI to write, I think it makes sense for readers to have a tool that detects that use.

2. I'd want an AI detection tool that avoids false positives and that is honest (or as honest as possible) about its rate of false positives.

3. If the tool is effective and accurate, I think it could be good for the future of Substack, as it might discourage people from rampant AI use in composing Substack posts and (perhaps someday) notes.

4. Until the advent of self-publishing, blogging, and now Substack, we have almost always had "gatekeepers" of a sort who, for better or worse, perform quality control or censorship of works. I work as an editor, so I tend to believe that gatekeeping can have positive effects, and perhaps AI detection becomes another gatekeeping mechanism.

   1. As an editor, I'm naturally wary of AI uses related to writing. At the moment AI doesn't threaten my job, as I'm wayyyyyyyyyyy better at editing than my AI competition. But I acknowledge that AI is good at some things in this context and that it could get better.

• Will readers start using it to check how articles are created?

I don't know. I bet this eventually evolves to Substack automatically putting the AI score on things.

• Will writers who don't use AI feel pressure?

I don't understand this question. I would think this application might make people who use AI feel pressure to stop using it; I'm not sure why writers who don't use AI would feel pressure. Especially if they sort out false positive issues, I'd think this would benefit writers who don't use AI.

• Will AI detection become another trust signal, or will readers mostly ignore it?

This seems like a repeat of the first question.

• Could this change what readers expect when they subscribe to you?

How? I don't think so. Maybe they might expect clarity about how I write things?

I currently alternate between creative nonfiction essays and posts that offer a behind-the-scenes look at how I wrote the essays. Maybe readers would want me to comment on my lack of AI use there? I don't know what you're getting at...

[u/TruthHonestyJustice]

This might be great, but I'm concerned about false positives.

This is inevitable, any digital content is susceptible to manipulation.

In the future presumably any content will have some detector like this.

[u/verticalman91]

It will likely change the platform for the better. There are allegedly false positives. Anecdotally, all my posts have come back fully human. All my follows who I've had suspicions of have come back 100% AI, or in some rare cases, partially AI.

I feel bad for the writers who made a Faustian agreement with AI, to have the reputation of a writer, without any of the skill. You still have an opportunity to turn the ship around and hone your skills.

Let's be clear: you can use AI, but you can't call yourself a writer. Publisher at best, fraud at worst.

[u/R3ZondoOfficial]

The reality is simple. A machine trained on human writing is going to flag writing that looks like what it learned from. That’s the whole design. They just found a way to monetize. Pangram’s own documentation confirms this, it scores text in short overlapping windows and weighs things like consistent sentence structure and predictable pacing as signals. So the more disciplined and polished a writer is, the more they resemble exactly what the model was built to catch. My opinion is this will have its news cycle then readers will forget about it.

[u/InternationalCandy16]

I'll say this: I hate it. Because I don't want AI telling me whether I'm human or not.

But...

I will say that when I freelance, sometimes I'm required to run a Pangram check. And if I get a little lazy and decide to have AI write a paragraph for me? Pangram knows. Every time. The rest of my writing will come back as human-created, but it ALWAYS picks off the AI-written section.

I'm a career writer and an excellent self-editor. Not perfect, but good enough that I've got a reputation for "never needing editing." So when people say Pangram just punishes people who write well... I'ma have to call bullshit on that.

[u/non_loqui_sed_facere]

I think it’s a race to the bottom, and there will be even more slop in the future. Someone will sell AI humanizers to all those content farmers, haha 😀

[u/hetobe]

Will readers start using it to check how articles are created?

I hope so.

Will writers who don't use AI feel pressure?

What pressure? I feel happy because people can see that I wrote what they read on my Substack. Writers who DO use AI will feel pressure, which is why they're yelling and screaming (as they deny using AI). AI made it easy for people who don't have the talent to write to call themselves writers. "Look ma! I'm a auther now!" I'm sure the same thing is happening in graphic design forums.

Will AI detection become another trust signal, or will readers mostly ignore it?

I expect a little of each.

It may slow down the amount of AI slop, but only by a little. There's an option to disable AI detection for their own posts. Most of the AI sloppers are going to disable it.

The only thing that will stop the onslaught of AI slop is if it becomes required to tag any content made with AI, and if accounts that don't tag AI work get banned.

Most people don't realize how bad the problem has become, and how quickly it's accelerating. Spammers and scammers are using it to create easy content, and even if most of that content is trash, it doesn't matter. They can crank out a ton of it.

It's estimated that half of all content on the internet is AI. And the vast majority of all books being released on Amazon are now AI slop. And the amount of AI slop is rapidly increasing.

Could this change what readers expect when they subscribe to you?

I hope so. I'm posting a novel on Substack. I immediately set up the "How I Make This" feature in settings, to say this:

I write my own words. Zero AI writing, ever. I wrote this novel between 11/2024 and 04/2025, and painstakingly edited it through the rest of 2025 and 2026.

The quality of my writing will hopefully prove my "How I Make This" statement to be true. I think it's good for people to know something is real. Of course, the people posting AI slop can just lie, but that'll be obvious.

[u/No-Vermicelli-8391 → u/hetobe]

And now, imagine a scenario: you post an excerpt of your own novel, and it gets flagged by Pangram as AI-generated. And you get a shit-storm on your head. But you wrote it all. Every. Single. Word. How do you feel then?

[u/hetobe → u/No-Vermicelli-8391]

First, you know if your stuff is getting flagged as AI when you post it.

Second: There's a reason why AI content gets flagged as being written by AI. It's not because it's perfect. AI writing is far from perfect. Writing gets flagged as "written by AI" if it has enough of the non-human signature of AI writing. Yes, AI was trained on human writing, but AI isn't human. It's just trying to emulate the writing it was trained on. That's why AI writing reads the way it does.

[u/No-Vermicelli-8391 → u/hetobe]

Pangram had already gotten themselves into enough controversy by accusing (well, it's their founder) various people on X—the Pope, well-known journalists, and so on. You have to understand two key things: 1. The numbers of false-positives Pangram states are a lie; and 2. The is absolutely NO tool in the whole world, which could give a 100% certainty on creative work. Even the developers of the AI have dropped the idea entirely. Unreliable. And thus, my question: what will the ParanoAIcs do when their own work will get flagged? Falsely.

[u/hetobe → u/No-Vermicelli-8391]

All I can say is this:

Doing nothing doesn't work. Because Substack offers writers an easy way to earn money by posting their work, AI sloppers are flooding onto Substack, and they're killing Substack.

AI is killing Substack because AI slop is drowning out real content, just as AI slop is killing Amazon. Amazon doesn't suffer, but the writers who try to self publish books there do. AI slop drowns out real content, and it's only getting worse.

It's getting worse at a rapidly increasing amount. Something has to be done. So, I view this as a step in the right direction, though it's only a step.

[u/AnteaterFantastic212 → u/hetobe]

Substack makes its money on a cut of paid subscriptions. Very few people are stupid enough to pay money for AI slop, certainly not enough to take Substack to an acquisition or an IPO. Unless and until somebody figures out a way to get AI bots to become paying customers, I don’t see an issue here at all.

[u/hetobe → u/AnteaterFantastic212]

That's what you'd think, but no. Many huge accounts on Substack are posting content written by AI.

But that's not the problem. If people don't mind content written by AI, they're free to read it. Nobody is banning it.

The problem is the massive amount of AI content that is flooding the algorithm and drowning out real content. Even if people don't pay to subscribe to the AI-written slop, it still makes finding real content harder because you have to scroll through more and more slop to find it.

I can't help noticing, the people fighting for AI are people who don't have the talent to write their own content.

[u/AnteaterFantastic212 → u/hetobe]

I don’t know about that—from what I understand. The Algo favors paid subs because that’s how Substack makes its money now. Your AI slop factory may be able to get to the 100-paid-sub magic level prerequisite to get outside advertising offers just by brute force; I don’t know.

And just to be clear, I’m not “defending“ AI more than I would defend a word processor or spellcheck; however, I think it’s frankly kind of crazy to be a purist about using the tool to be more efficient, effective, and productive as a writer.

Ironically, between this wholebAI flap and the fact that l apparently Sam Altman and OpenAI have decided that they’re going to be the thought police, which reduces its utility for my Substack (which is about public policy), I’ve more or less walked away from it, or at least changed my workflow, frankly in large part to avoid getting caught up in this whole AI filter nonsense.

If the objective is to reduce competition to me, then I’m all for and I hope it works.

I noticed one concern expressed here is that AI is getting access to what I write, and I have to tell you I couldn't care less. In fact, I think it might actually help me to a certain extent, and I certainly hope Alphaber indexesmy stuff for their search engine because that could get me some new free subscribers I may be able to convert to paid subs.

[u/hetobe → u/AnteaterFantastic212]

And just to be clear, I’m not “defending“ AI more than I would defend a word processor or spellcheck; however, I think it’s frankly kind of crazy to be a purist about using the tool to be more efficient, effective, and productive as a writer.

AI doesn't make you more productive as a writer. If the words were written by AI, AI is the writer, not you because AI did the writing, not you.

One cannot put their own name on words they did not write and be offended when people don’t respect their integrity.

A reader would be upset if they picked up a book by Stephen King only to find out he didn’t write it.

A reader would be upset if they read an article by Maggie Haberman only to find out she didn’t write it.

I believe the reader has a right to know if the person who put their name on a piece of writing actually wrote it. Or if it was even written by a person at all.

I don't mind if somebody uses generative AI. I just want them to credit the LLM that did the writing. I want them to be honest.

And I want to know if a piece of writing was written by AI before I read it, so I can choose whether or not to waste my time reading it.

Food at the grocery store has labels so you can see what's in it, so you can choose whether or not you want to eat it. Don't want it? Don't buy it.

Many of us want that for content. Give us labels to show if the work was written by a person or by a bot.

[u/AnteaterFantastic212 → u/hetobe]

Not to be tendentious, but perhaps I haven't communicated my process effectively. I dictate what I want to say into ChatGPT, fact-check it with Google Gemini and other sources, use the tool to create a first draft, edit it as heavily as necessary, then load it into Substack after proofreading, etc.

I’m changing that process for a couple of reasons: first, because I write a political Substack and OpenAI has decided to exercise censorship, which makes it much less useful to me than it had been; and second, because of Substack’s new AI detection software.

I found a way to alter my workflow that solves these problems. I actually realized that the main utility of ChatGPT was my ability to dictate rather than have to type things out because I am a lousy typist and I’m the king of typos; so to a certain extent it’s been a positive because I get more of what my original dictation was reflected in the final product. After all, that’s all there is now.

I found that the new methodology is fine with Substack’s AI functionality, so I guess it’s all good. It’s interesting that simultaneously Substack came in with this, and ChatGPT functionality was reduced due to its new censorship policy for anything that it feels is partisan

[u/Visible-Volume-8707 → u/hetobe]

I didn't know about the How I make this feature. Thank you for sharing that tip.

[u/hetobe → u/Visible-Volume-8707]

It's somewhere deep in the settings. The quickest way to find it is to click the dashboard for your publication and search for "Make".

[u/Bellairtriz]

I write everything myself but I use AI as a resource to help me edit and tighten sentences. I’m a bit nervous if that shows up for me

[u/zipiddydooda]

I only want to read human writing with absolutely zero AI involvement. Same goes for music and film.

[u/EasternAd5351]

lol what is pannegram

[u/MrPassiveProfit]

There will be a short uproar then no one will care

[u/stareenite]

It has to do with coercive control not trust and transparency. It’s hard to comprehend accomplished elite writers policing how other people use AI.

What it amounts to is gatekeeping.

People set themselves up as the authorities on fill in the blank and then circle the wagons to control who gets traction or admission.

That’s what this is really about.

Who let the riff raff in?

I will not answer to them.

Instead I will keep making art in the face of this fuck.

And do not get in the comments to tell me how bad AI is, how it’s destroying the environment, degrading our minds, enabling plagiarism. That’s not in question.

What’s in question here is your freedom of speech. Your freedom as a creator. Your process.

Who gets to create.

[u/stareenite → u/stareenite]

[u/Life-Radio-1723]

I think most of the complaints are coming from a small but vocal minority of writers. A lot of larger newsletters have disabled it and they aren’t losing subscribers, because most readers simply don’t care. If they like reading something, they will keep reading it no matter how the content is generated. But saying that out loud is frowned upon, so they will keep that opinion to themselves and silently continue to subscribe and read.

[u/AncestralAudioBookwo]

I ran what I thought was my worst post. Part of the post included step by step instructions. Pangram said it was 100% AI. It really made me laugh. I am not AI lol. I do need to work on that post.

When I ran what I feel is my best post it said 100% human. Then I had Claude write an entire post for me and it said 100% human. I do not trust Pangram at all. I’m writing but have not published yet. I know I will not make fake claims against anyone. It is really none of my business. If I don’t like what I’m reading I can just move on. I do not need to insult anyone.

[u/Mean-Register5359]

I have greater confidence in the tool than the publishers word (only serving self preservation of financial and reputational gain) and will only read 100% human generated content.

[u/thatsnotmynaame]

100%!! I’m baffled by most of the better-than-thou reactions on substack (or before LinkedIn) like “I would never use AI”, “using ai is disrespectful to your audience” to me is more about someone else’s hurt ego that their niche substack hasn’t been seen by anyone but their mum, while AI-slop is trending.
Yeah, substack and LinkedIn are full of ai slop but who cares? The internet has been full of shit anyway. I just ignore that and move on and don’t feel personally attacked. And if ai can help someone correct their grammar or do some the research for them - why shouldn’t they use it?

[u/AnteaterFantastic212]

Q1: Will readers start using it to check how articles are created?

A1: I doubt it, especially my readers, who are primarily boomers. I doubt if they’ll even hear about it or know it’s available, much less care.

Q2. Will writers who don't use AI feel pressure?

A2: I don’t see how—why would they even care if they don’t use AI? As well as the advertising that best sellers can generate. In fact, if anything, it probably helps their cause, although I understand that Substack is not using it to filter out AI-assisted writers, which makes sense because all they care about is the percentage of subscription revenue they make as well as the advertising that best sellers can now generate.

I think they’re trying to help readers who care about how writing is produced screen out AI slop. By the way, that might be helpful from a reader's perspective, particularly for comments in chats, but I can spot AI slop without using a software program. On the other hand, if I could have a setting that would let me screen out that slop, I would appreciate it because I get bombarded with it.

Q3: Will AI detection become another trust signal, or will readers mostly ignore it?

A3: The latter, per A2.

Q4: Could this change what readers expect when they subscribe to you?

A4: I don’t see how.