AI-generated versus Human Content - 100% AI

In the age of putting sincere thought on the back burner in the name of AI convenience, the internet is encountering the disturbing experience of too many writers going the copy-and-paste way and posting AI-generated content without any personal touch and creative input. This deluge of shoddy posts demeans the art of sincere writing. It fills the digital world with lifeless and mass-produced content. Such writers seem interested in shortcuts over connecting with the audience, downgrading the craft and originality that defines quality online content.

The advent of sophisticated chatbots has made it incredibly easy to generate paragraphs of content at the press of a button.

While AI is a fantastic resource if utilized ethically, its misuse by people unwilling to make the effort and the time to write thoughtful articles is controversial and disconcerting.

There is general agreement that these effortless pieces generated through algorithms insult readers. They also offend serious writers who struggle to craft real pieces of writing that are nuanced. The implications of this are far-reaching; it creates a mediocrity culture where the quantity of posts is given more importance than the quality of thought. Platforms like LinkedIn play an essential role in this game. LinkedIn explicitly recommends "posting often" for more connections and better attention.

Many AI-detection tools have surfaced in response to this bogus content, including GPTZero and Originality. These sites were designed to detect the giveaways of machine-generated content through measures of perplexity and burstiness of writing. Their application is two-pronged: on the one hand, they are a promise to maintain integrity in digital content; on the other hand, they expose the endemic laziness of people who click "generate" instead of the effort of critical thinking or original writing.

Most AI content detection specialists agree that the signature of human-written content is the low detection score. No one agrees on the threshold figure, but most suggest that anything from 10% to 15% is expected of genuinely human-written content. However, over 20% or 25% of suspicion is aroused that the content is perhaps entirely or at least substantially written by AI. This threshold figure is the source of most controversy in authenticity disputes over content. The mere existence of these threshold figures only highlights the distinction between diligent, careful writing and the shortcuts of the uncommitted. Adding to the complexity is the use of writing improvement tools like Grammarly. Although Grammarly intends to make writing more precise and accurate, its use will tend to drive the writing towards the stylistic traits that AI detectors will recognize as non-human. Even if the document is written entirely by a human, using Grammarly will result in a detection score in the 10-15% zone. This is one of the challenges and limitations of quantitatively measuring the authenticity of content.

In a support conversation, Grammarly stated, "Depending on what type of suggestions are used, there is a possibility they could affect the gen AI score."

Although the tools are necessary to upkeep quality standards, they also risk punishing hard-working writers who use technological aid to improve their writing, thus blurring the lines of distinction between human creativity and algorithmic aid.

At its essence, the debate over AI-generated content and its detection is not technical but cultural. On the one hand, they are the custodians of the old traditions of painstaking, original writing; on the other, they are the growing number of people who are content with the minimum and willing to outsource the heavy lifting to the machine. As we move ahead, we must recognize and engage the more profound implications of outsourcing creative expression to the machine. Only by challenging ourselves to higher standards will we stand any hope of retaining the richness and integrity of our digital culture.