GPTZero

GPTZero
Developer(s)Edward Tian
Alex Cui
Yazan Mimi[1]
Initial release3 January 2023; 22 months ago (2023-01-03)
Written inPython
PlatformCloud computing
Websitegptzero.me[1][2]

GPTZero is an artificial intelligence detection software developed to identify artificially generated text, such as those produced by large language models.[3][4][5][6]

While GPTZero was praised for its efforts to prevent academic dishonesty, many news outlets criticized the tool's false positive rate, which can be especially harmful in academic settings.[7]

History

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GPTZero was developed by Edward Tian, a Princeton University undergraduate student, and launched online in January 2023 in response to concerns about AI-generated usage in academic plagiarism.[8][2] GPTZero said in May 2023 it raised over 3.5 million dollars in seed funding.[9][10]

In the first week of its release, the GPTZero experienced 30,000 uses, which led to a crash. It was supported by the web app company Streamlit, who allocated more server resources in response.[11] In July 2024, it had 4 million users, compared to 1 million one year earlier.[12]

In summer 2024, GPTZero raised $10 million in Series A round funding.[13]

In September 2024, GPTZero announced an authorship tracking software that enables "to compile and share data about their writing process such as their copy/paste history, the number of editors they had, and how long editing took", in an effort to "to move away from an all-or-nothing paradigm around AI writing towards a more nuanced one."[13]

Mechanism

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GPTZero uses qualities it terms perplexity and burstiness to attempt determining if a passage was written by a AI.[14] According to the company, perplexity is how random the text in the sentence is, and whether the way the sentence is constructed is unusual or "surprising" for the application. It relies on language models, and the more such models, the higher the chance that a person did not write the text.[15] In contrast, burstiness compares sentences with each other, determining their similarity. Human text is more discontinuous, meaning humans tend to write with more sentence variation than AI.[2]

Use cases

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The academic community has attempted using GPTZero to tackle concerns about AI-generated content for plagiarism.[16][15][14] Educational institutions, including Princeton University, have discussed the use of GPTZero to combat AI-generated content in academic settings, with mixed opinions.[2][17] In October 2023, GPTZero had partnered with the American Federation of Teachers.[18]

By 2024, Tian reported that GPTZero also "received a lot of adoption with hiring managers, with recruiting [and] cover letter analysis."[13]

Efficacy

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In a March 2023 paper named "Can AI-Generated Text be Reliably Detected?",[19] computer scientists Vinu Sankar Sadasivan, Aounon Kumar, Sriram Balasubramanian, Wenxiao Wang, and Soheil Feizi from the University of Maryland demonstrate empirically and theoretically that several AI-text detectors are not reliable in practical scenarios.[20][21]

Tech website Futurism tested the tool, and said that while the "results are impressive", based on its error rate, teachers relying on the tool would end up "falsely accusing nearly 20 percent of [innocent students] of academic misconduct".[22]

The Washington Post noted in August 2023 that GPTZero suffers from false positives, emphasizing that "even a small 'false positive' error rate means that some students could be wrongly accused [of academic misconduct]".[7]

News website Ars Technica commented that humans can still write sentences in a highly regular way, leading to false positives. The writer, Benj Edwards, went on to state that the perplexity score only concerns itself with what is "surprising" for the AI, leading to instances where highly common texts, such as the US Constitution, are labeled as likely AI-generated.[23]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b "Meet the Etobicoke-born inventor of the ChatGPT detector". Toronto Life. February 16, 2023. Archived from the original on April 24, 2024.
  2. ^ a b c d "Edward Tian's GPTZERO Software Aims to Detect AI-Generated Plagiarism". The Daily Princetonian.
  3. ^ "GPTZERO: A New Tool to Detect AI-Generated Content in ChatGPT". The Washington Post.
  4. ^ "How apps like GPTZero detect content written by A.I." CNBC. July 24, 2023. Retrieved September 21, 2023.
  5. ^ "GPTZero App Seeks to Thwart AI Plagiarism in Schools, Online Media". Bloomberg.com. May 8, 2023. Retrieved October 21, 2023.
  6. ^ "American Federation of Teachers partners with AI identification platform, GPTZero". CBS News. October 17, 2023. Retrieved October 21, 2023.
  7. ^ a b Fowler, Geoffrey (August 14, 2023). "What to do when you're accused of AI cheating". The Washington Post. Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  8. ^ "How a 23-year-old college student built one of the leading AI detection tools". Business Insider. Retrieved September 21, 2023.
  9. ^ "This AI detection tool raised $3.5 million to check the internet for computer-generated work". Fast Company. 2023.
  10. ^ Shrivastava, Rashi. "With Seed Funding Secured, AI Detection Tool GPTZero Launches New Browser Plugin". Forbes. Retrieved May 17, 2023.
  11. ^ "GPTZERO: A New AI Detector Aims to Combat ChatGPT Plagiarism". NPR. January 9, 2023.
  12. ^ "AI Detectors Falsely Accuse Students of Cheating—With Big Consequences". Bloomberg.com. October 18, 2024. Retrieved October 19, 2024.
  13. ^ a b c https://www.inc.com/brian-contreras/how-can-you-detect-ai-generated-text-this-startup-has-some-compelling-ideas.html
  14. ^ a b "What is GPTZERO? The ChatGPT Detection Tool Explained". Tech Learning. January 27, 2023.
  15. ^ a b "AI Detector for Educators: What is GPTZERO?". Jumpstart Magazine. March 2, 2023.
  16. ^ Tribune.com.pk (February 22, 2023). "GPTZero: A ChatGPT Detection Tool". The Express Tribune.
  17. ^ "GPTZero to help teachers deal with ChatGPT-generated student essays". The Indian Express. January 12, 2023. Retrieved September 21, 2023.
  18. ^ "US Teachers Union Bans ChatGPT and Deploys GPTZero To Detect Cheating". MobileAppAaily. Retrieved October 21, 2023.
  19. ^ Vinu Sankar Sadasivan; Kumar, Aounon; Balasubramanian, Sriram; Wang, Wenxiao; Feizi, Soheil (March 17, 2023). "Can AI-Generated Text be Reliably Detected?". arXiv:2303.11156 [cs.CL].
  20. ^ Knibbs, Kate. "Researchers Tested AI Watermarks—and Broke All of Them". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved October 21, 2023.
  21. ^ "No reliable way to detect AI-generated text, boffins sigh". The Register. March 21, 2023. Retrieved September 25, 2023.
  22. ^ "There's a Problem With That App That Detects GPT-Written Text: It's Not Very Accurate". Futurism. January 9, 2023. Retrieved October 21, 2023.
  23. ^ Edwards, Benj (July 14, 2023). "Why AI detectors think the US Constitution was written by AI". Ars Technica. Retrieved December 14, 2023.
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