“Can Turnitin detect ChatGPT?” becomes a familiar question for students, especially when ChatGPT and other AI writing tools develop more and more rapidly. The answer varies based on various factors, which are all available in this article.
Besides whether ChatGPT can be detected by Turnitin, TechDictionary will also cover other matters, such as how Turnitin can detect ChatGPT, whether Turnitin can detect Chat GPT-4, or whether Turnitin can detect Chat GPT if you paraphrase.
Does Turnitin Detect ChatGPT?
The short answer is yes. With 98% accuracy and a 1% false positive rate, Turnitin can detect ChatGPT-generated content. After analyzing the content, Turnitin will provide an originality report to indicate an AI detection score that ranges from 0% to 100%.
Most of the AI detectors can flag AI writing. However, they do not always guarantee 100% accuracy. This means that AI can make mistakes, and Turnitin AI reports may be wrong.
Let’s take a quick look at the Washington Post study about the ability to detect AI of Turnitin.
Out of the 16 text samples, which included AI-generated, human-written, and mixed pieces, Turnitin could only identify 6 as being AI-generated. However, it failed to flag the other 3 as such. Moreover, Turnitin made an error by flagging a human-written text as AI writing. This can be explained by the false positive that was mentioned earlier.
Related Article: Who is Responsible for AI Mistakes? Revealed The Answer in 2024
How Does Turnitin Work?
This tool was originally used to identify plagiarism. Still, the Similarity Score is also useful for spotting ChatGPT-written text through this process:
- Comparing text: Turnitin has an extensive database of written academic materials, like articles and papers. Your submitted document will be compared to this database to identify all similarities.
- Writing Patterns: Its algorithms can tell the difference between human writing and the writing styles that AI models use.
- Statistical Analysis: By looking at perplexity and burstiness (the structure, word choice, and length of the sentences in the text), mark text that fits the patterns that AI generates.
- Creating Similarity Report: The Similarity Report highlights the matching content with links to the sources and comes up with a score based on the document’s originality.
- Frequent Updates: Turnitin keeps its systems up to date with the latest versions of AI checker.
ChatGPT-generated content is largely identical to the academic materials. Therefore, the Similarity Score can detect a sufficient amount, showing the matching words, phrases, and ideas to the source.
Turnitin’s AI writing detector takes this to another height by further examining the text. This tool recognizes Chat GPT’s writing patterns and styles, which are different from typical human writing. Each sentence receives a score between 0 and 1 to determine whether a human or AI writes it. So, Turnitin can identify ChatGPT even if you paraphrase.
Can Turnitin Detect AI-Written Content from Other Tools?
Yes, Turnitin can detect AI-generated content by other AI tools. We have already tested whether Turnitin can detect QuillBot, Wordtune, and even Grammarly. The answer is quite the same. Turnitin can detect most AI writing tools, but not all the time. However, we note that Turnitin is hard to flag text generated using QuillBot for paraphrasing.
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How Accurate is Turnitin in Detecting AI-Written Text?
According to The Washington Post, Turnitin claims to have a 98% success rate of detecting AI-generated content. Still, mistakes can happen, as its detector and Similarity Score have several limitations. Here are four particular cases:
- Turnitin can’t spot Chat GPT-generated text in non-sentence structures, like bullet points, lists, or tables. The same applies to non-text content: equations, images, etc.
- The false positive rate of Turnitin’s AI writing detector is 1%: Out of 100 works written by people, it can falsely flag one as AI-written.
- Turnitin may fail to notice 15% of AI-generated text in a document.
- Turnitin is less effective when the submitted document is in uncommon languages.
Additionally, Turnitin works better with long-form writing, so your work needs at least 300 words to get its assistance in detecting AI-written text.
Our Tips For You To Avoid Turnitin AI Detection
Using AI to assist your writing is by no means a bad thing. Since even Turnitin can make some mistakes in detecting AI-written text, here are some quick and simple suggestions to help your article pass its AI detection:
- Do not use the exact writing what ChatGPT generates. Instead, edit the outputs as much as possible by rewriting and add perplexity and burstiness.
- Add your own writing styles
- Cite Source & Quotes
- Run your document through Grammarly or QuillBot to check for errors in your writing.
- Use a third-party program, like ZeroGPT or Originality AI, to check your essay before submitting it.
- If you use Chat GPT in a writing code assignment, restructure the code as much as possible, such as switching the functions’ order.
Still, relying too much on AI, especially ChatGPT, results in serious ethical consequences, so you should refrain from using it. Not to mention, academic professionals and senior content can easily recognize inconsistencies in information or writing style, even without the help of the AI detector.
The Ethical Implications of Using ChatGPT
No one can deny the convenience Chat GPT provides, not to mention its easy accessibility. However, along with many benefits, Chat GPT raises many ethical-related questions, as below:
- People can use ChatGPT to spread realistic-looking fake content in the forms of news articles, social media posts, and many more.
- Cybercriminals can create different cyber attacks by using ChatGPT to create spam emails and phishing messages.
- Texts and data fed to ChatGPT sometimes contain biased or stereotyped information.
- ChatGPT can be used to collect the users’ data.
Conclusion
Turnitin can detect chat-GPT as well as other AI writing tools. However, its not 100% accuracy. Relying on tools that claim to render you invisible is a risky affair. It is crucial to prioritize ethical behavior and the development of writing skills to acquire knowledge and enhance one’s writing abilities instead of engaging in plagiarism.
If you have other questions about this, feel free to leave comment for us.
