Originality.AI review: our tried, tested and recommended AI content detection tool

As AI writing software continues to improve and get more popular, the need for reliable AI detection programs grows larger. Being able to determine whether something was written by a human or AI is especially important in academia. 

Universities need certainty that the degrees they are granting are actually because of a student’s hard work and not simply because the student knew their way around an AI writing program, such as Jasper.ai or Copymatic.

As we discussed in our review of Jordan Peterson’s controversial comments about the future of AI, the challenge academia faces with AI written text is very similar to the challenge schools faced with how the internet made it easier for students to plagiarize text. 

To fight plagiarism, academic institutions now use anti-plagiarism programs that compare students’ work to text from textbooks, news articles, scientific journals, other student papers, and numerous other types of written work available on the internet. 

Just like with anti-plagiarism programs, AI detection programs will soon be commonplace at every school and university in the country. Here at Humanoid, we think this change will be relatively soon because there are already so many AI detection programs available on the market.

We’ve already taken a broad look at analyzing some of the most popular AI detection tools, but now we are taking a more in-depth look at one of the best AI detection tools, Originality.AI. 

Originality.AI is a premium AI detection tool with a huge reputation as one of the best AI detection rules around. Our original review proved that to be the case, which is why we thought it deserved a closer look. 

Originality.AI background

Like many AI detection tools and AI writing programs alike, Originality.AI uses OpenAI’s GPT-3 as a basis for their programming. Originality.AI uses GPT-3. other language models, and some of their own programming to analyze text and determine whether the material is human or AI generated.

Originality.AI’s content checker gives you an “AI Detection Score,” which shows the percentage confidence of Originality.AI that a text was generated by a human or AI. 

We are going to focus on Originality.AI’s content checker, but there are lots of other cool things Originality.AI does too. 

Here are some of Originality.AI’s other features:

• Accurate AI detector – With 94% precision, detect ChatGPT-generated content
• A simple dashboard (works on desktop and mobile)
• My team’s feature for handling big groups
• Supports all popular NLP methods
• Website scan function for website purchasers to determine whether the content is created using AI 
• API access – Create unique apps by integrating Originality.ai with other technologies.
• Google Chrome extension.

Unfortunately, Originality.AI’s product isn’t free. Originality.AI costs $0.01 per credit (one credit is 100 words). We think this is a relatively affordable price, especially if you need to analyze lots of text with great certainty. 

Of course, whether this price is worth it depends on if Originality.AI actually works. We set out to find out if Originality.AI is worth it by testing their content checker. See the results of our tests below along with some explanations of our methodology.

Human text test result: Pass

We tested Originality.AI’s content checker with a variety of human generated text written by yours truly. We ran seven human generated texts through Originality.AI’s content checker to see if it could recognize the text was human-made.

The texts included three college essays, two high school essays, a personal statement that was included as a part of university application, and an article from this very website. 

We’re happy to say that Originality.AI recognized each one as being human generated. Originality.AI made its determination with great confidence as well. The average AI Detection Score of our human generated text was 97% in favor of original content. This is great because the worst thing an AI detection tool can do is to give a false positive. 

False positives are when an AI detection tool says something is AI generated, when it really was made 100% by a human. Obviously this is bad because it means the AI detection tool failed, but false positives can have real consequences. 

For example, a professor could wrongfully give a student a failing grade because of an AI detection tool false positive. This would be potentially life changing for both the student and professor. 

Originality.AI’s content checker is great for detecting human-made text and very rarely produces any false positives. According to Originality.AI, they have a false positive rate of just 5%. 

Now, let’s take a look at how well Originality.AI detects AI text. 

AI text test result: Pass

We tested Originality.AI’s content checker with six AI generated texts. Two were personal statements written by OpenAI’s flagship product, ChatGPT. We also used an essay written by ChatGPT and two articles created using Copymatic (an AI text generation program).

All six AI texts were given an AI Detection Score of 100% written by AI. Even after tinkering with one of the personal statements to make it sound more “human-like,” the personal statement still was given a score of 99% likely to have been written by AI.

Basically, Originality.AI’s content checker is very good at detecting AI. Originality.AI’s own date backs this up. They claim Originality.AI’s can detect AI 100% of the time and there are never false negatives.