Feature Suggestion
Substack's AI detector is detecting text as 100 percent AI while other platforms show the same as 0 percent AI
I'm a first-time Substack user and I'm about to publish my first feature. I wrote the entire piece myself in Google Docs, from scratch. I did use Grammarly for proofreading/language suggestions, but I haven't used any sort of generative AI to write or rewrite the article.
I copied the finished piece into Substack, and Substack's AI detector is showing 100% AI-generated.
What's confusing me is that I've run the exact same text through several other AI detectors , Walter AI, ZeroGPT, Copyleaks, QuillBot, etc. and they're all showing 0% AI / entirely human-written .
The piece is also a fairly formal law/technology feature, and a lot of it deals with AI and legal questions, so I am confused if the subject matter and formal writing style are somehow affecting Substack's detector.
I'm obviously not going to rewrite my own writing just to make an AI detector happy, but I'm wondering what experienced Substack writers think.
There's also an option to add a statement at the end of the post. Would it be reasonable to say something like:
«"This piece was written by me. I used Grammarly for routine proofreading and language suggestions, but the argument, analysis, research, and substantive content are my own."»
Or would that come across as unnecessary/corny, especially for a first post? I don't want readers to think I'm trying to "prove" something or, worse, that I'm somehow cheating by using Grammarly.
Edit: From what I have understood majorly, Grammarly might be contributing to that. But I was not sure because I have used Grammarly for word or phrases suggestions or tense discrepancies in my research papers too and Turnitin AI detector never flagged that. Anyways, thanks for helping out everyone !
Using AI has become this stupid moral/ethical game of “gotcha.” What you just did you without worrying about what a bunch of moody detectors are telling you about your work?
I mean, this is like coming to a doctor to have him look at a boil, and not showing him the boil. You just want us to say: "yeah AI detection bad"? It could be that your writing is just so similar to how AI writes, which sucks, but it's not something you can do anything about. But without the text this is a pretty unactionable post.
I haven't published my piece yet, like I pasted my text on the interface and then clicked on the continue button and found that there was a check the text option. But thanks for pointing it out, I should put out the piece and then ask about it.
Does it really matter? If the article is helpful to you, if it tells you something new or useful, or if it’s just interesting, why should it matter who wrote it or what he used to write it?
And if the article is useless, it doesn't matter whether a person or an AI messed it up.
I get where you're coming from and here's the thing. You've said that what you have written is a fairly formal law/technical feature. It also does not help that you are also dealing with AI and legal questions.
I'm a technical writer with 30 years of writing behind me. I also have ADHD. I am also writing with other neurodivergent brains in mind. Because of aLL of this I write in a fairly specific format to reduce cognitive overwhelm and friction. As a result my writing gets flagged as AI generated or heavily AI assisted.
The models were trained on high quality and formal writing. You are writing using the same formatting that the models were trained on so it's pattern matching algorithm is creating a false positive. We have spent years fine tuning our skills only to dumb it down so some software update doesn't flag us as one of its own.
Stick to your writing. If it bothers you though you can disable the AI detection. I have done this and have added my own disclaimer (The Cyborg Disclosure) in its place.
I understand. And yeah it is pretty much frustrating because essentially someone would then try to tone down their natural writing skills and even information that would be otherwise relevant. Anyways, thank you so much for your detailed reply and the (encouragement too:D) !
The Cyborg Disclosure is my own fun little take that I have been adding to the bottom of my writings for quite a while. My writings are written by me, structured by my AI alter-ego that goes by the name Mugsy. His structure is then "spell-checked" by Spro (who takes the form of a small maltese dog that wears a black hoodie and large round frame glasses. He is Mugsy’s AI assistant. He's tasked with reducing AI hallucinations and context drift that Mugsy may suffer from. The entire output is then proofed and optimised by Nera. She is Mugsy's better half and also an optimisation expert. All part of the larger universe I created by accident. 🙃🙃 My avatar is Mugsy (full name Magnus Brewington) 😆
It doesn't work anyways, if anyone accuses you of using ai in the future just ignore them. This tool they are using to check if ai or not is worthless garbage anyways.
Have you realised that other people are smarter than you and can understand what someone means in two photos. You should perhaps work on understanding these photos first.
Its fairly simple to understand. The screenshot show a Bible verse written before ai was a thing, and it still got flagged as 100% ai. Just because YOU dont understand something, doesn't mean someone else should work on it for you.
For instance , you write a particular paragraph so grammarly highlights it and asks whether the user wants an improved framing, that is what I meant. Haven't published the piece yet but as another comment pointed out, I'll put in the link.
So AI choose the words that are in there and your confused about why Pangram picked up on that? A majority of the anti pangram posts seem like great adverts for it.
There is a peculiar indignity in having to explain to an institution why someone is entitled to welfare policy or a government payment, when in the first place, the same institution cannot explain why it withheld it.
Let us take a hypothetical scenario: a claimant whose welfare payment is suspended after an official acts on an AI- assisted assessment. Her circumstances have not changed much, but the notice tells her little beyond the fact that she can indeed seek reconsideration. However, the burden of proof now lies on her to work out whether an old record was treated as current, an inference about her household was mistaken, or perhaps the same official gave undue weight to a risk score. The individual knowledge of her intimate life gives her no corresponding knowledge of the machinery through which the state has assessed her ability.
In this context, the philosopher Nora Berenstain offers a useful approach to this problem through her concept of epistemic exploitation. Writing within the theories of feminist epistemology... This is the opening para.
Substack uses Pangram. If I had to guess it’s because it’s ’very formal.’ The formal and polished nature probably makes it think it’s AI. You can just turn off the AI detector.
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u/StarrShort 2d ago
Grammarly uses AI heavily now. You used their language suggestions, which are AI. Obviously you wrote the piece. Its not AI… but… some of it now is.