Grammarly Is Getting In On the AI Detection Game

Most of us are familiar with AI-detection tools — the ones that promise to tell you whether or not content was written by a human or AI.

In short — and based on my experience — a majority of these web-based “tools” simply don’t work, at least not as advertised. I’ve also seen plenty of posts floating around of teachers accusing students of writing essays with AI when they’re adamant they haven’t used them at all. While those are some up-in-the-air examples that I cannot verify, I have a few of my own that concur:

I’ve copied and pasted completely original content into various tools and been told that a healthy percentage was probably AI-generated. I’ve also seen the complete opposite after pasting in copy that contained verbatim text from ChatGPT, where it told me that it was most likely entirely written by a human.

Needless to say, these types of tools need work. But Grammarly is in on the game now in a new way, and what they’re offering seems to deliver on its promises.

What Is Grammarly Authorship and How Does It Work?

Grammarly Authorship is advertised as more than a simple detection tool. To quote them, they say it’s a “set of features that help users demonstrate their sources of text in a Google doc.”

Essentially, the feature helps writers “build a case” for their work as they write it so they can prove it’s unique to whoever they’re sending it off to.

That’s the first difference if you’re comparing Grammarly Authorship to other web-based Gen AI detection tools; like Grammarly itself, Authorship is browser-based and works directly within your Google Doc.

From there, it begins to categorize your writing under one of three groups as you type:

• Typed text, which is text you’re manually writing in the Doc;
• Pasted text, which describes text you paste from a browser-based source, including ChatGPT and other gen AI models; and
• Unknown source, which it labels text when it cannot distinguish the origin.

From there, it breaks it down even further in the report you can generate afterward, offering percentages for: words typed by a human; words typed by a human but rephrased with AI; and words typed by a human then edited with Grammarly.

For text it labels as “copied for a source,” it breaks it down as follows: AI-generated; copied from a website; unnatural typing pattern; copied from an unknown source.

Is Grammarly Authorship Detecting AI-Generated Text?

Grammarly Authorship doesn’t claim to detect AI-generated text. The company has a totally separate web-based AI detection tool that’s more akin to those inconsistent ones I mentioned earlier. I’ve never personally used it, so I can’t speak to its efficacy.

But back to Authorship; it’s doing something fundamentally different than the web-based tools. It’s recognizing the domain or URL that a Chrome Browser tab, for example, was on when a copy-paste occurred. Knowing that, some folks at Brafton put the tool to the test to see what its strengths and limitations are.

What Grammarly Authorship Can and Cannot Do Right Now

It’s worth noting that Authorship is still in a beta testing phase, so features and functionalities may change upon full release. But as it exists now, we’ve uncovered some useful insights about the tool that are good to know:

Yes, when Grammarly Authorship is ‘on’ in a Google Doc, it can recognize and distinguish manually written text from copied/pasted text — and with pretty great accuracy.

That said, the tool isn’t ‘detecting’ which text was written by you and which is from an AI, it’s simply recognizing the origin of it via your browser-based clipboard.

Since Grammarly itself said in their announcement that Authorship “helps users demonstrate their sources of text,” it’s clear they recognize this tool is user-facing. It’s essentially designed to help writers prove that they have written their copy themselves, which in turn helps them disprove any accusations (maybe ones stemming from those unreliable detection tools) that they generated their copy using AI.

In that regard, Authorship seems to be an invaluable tool for writers — especially those who have been accused of using AI when they haven’t.

But what about its limitations?

After a quick test, it appears that its accurate results are tied directly to the original user and Google Doc, meaning they’re only visible to you with the option to share the report with “your professor, boss, or editor” afterward if you choose.

Moreover, it seems as though creating a copy of a document in Google Docs (file > make a copy) erases Authorship’s knowledge, even if the copy is the exact same. It doesn’t carry results over to the new document.

In theory, you could generate an entire article, create a copy of it in Google Docs and the tool will simply categorize everything as “unknown” in origin. So, if you’re keen to use the feature to prove your writing’s uniqueness, remember a couple of things:

• Always be sure to turn the feature on before you start writing.
• Always generate the report from the original document.

My Opinion On Grammarly’s Authorship

As an advocate for both originality in writing and using AI responsibly when and where appropriate, I can get behind this new Authorship feature — and I think lots of others will, too.

I’ve seen far too many posts on LinkedIn lately that explain how Gen AI tools have started picking up on more nuanced writing patterns and preferences, with a recent example being the em dash (—). Apparently, Gen AI loves to use these little handy punctuation marks now, which has left lots of writers (according to post comments) pulling back and changing how they write (using fewer em dashes, or none at all) in hopes of appearing more authentic to their audience. That sucks, full stop.

In cases like these, Authorship offers a way for writers or students to prove their originality without feeling like they have to make fundamental changes to their writing style, cadence or unique tone. That’s a big win in my opinion.

On the other hand, it’s still in a beta phase, so it’s difficult to tell the full extent of its features or if they’ll change when the finished version comes. We also don’t have many user anecdotes yet — not even on Reddit! So, the general consensus is still TBD, but I think Authorship will ultimately be a useful tool for writers.

Final Thoughts

It seems as though not many people have written about Grammarly’s Authorship and its effectiveness yet. It only recently became available, so that makes sense. In my short time exploring it, it seems fairly accurate if you use it correctly.

Grammarly says it’s gradually rolling out Authorship to Free, Premium, and Pro account users, so, if you don’t see the feature yet and are interested, just keep checking back; it should be available soon.

Note: This article was originally published on contentmarketing.ai.