AI detection guides

Plain-English guides to AI detection: what scores mean, false flags, how detectors work and how accurate they are, and the rules at school and work.

If you were flagged

• Flagged as AI but you wrote it? What to do next

  What a detector score can't prove, the evidence that clears students, and a step-by-step plan.

• Are AI detectors biased against non-native English speakers?

  The 2023 Stanford study, what changed with newer detectors, and where the bias still shows up.

Using a detector well

• What does an AI detection score mean?

  Turnitin, GPTZero, Originality.ai, Copyleaks and Pangram each measure something different. A side-by-side table.

• How to check your essay for AI before you submit it

  For students: check your draft, fix what's flagged the honest way, and keep the evidence that protects you.

• How to check a student's essay for AI, fairly

  For teachers: a six-step process built on Turnitin's, MLA-CCCC's and universities' own guidance.

• Free AI detectors compared: what each free version gives you

  Words per check, checks per day, sign-up and plagiarism for GPTZero, Copyleaks, QuillBot, Scribbr, ZeroGPT and more, read on each vendor's own page.

How detectors work

• How do AI detectors work?

  Trained classifiers, perplexity and burstiness, zero-shot methods and watermarks, with the research behind each and where each one fails.

• AI detector vs plagiarism checker: what's the difference?

  What each tool checks, why ChatGPT text usually passes plagiarism checks, and what paraphrasing does to both.

How accurate detectors are

• How accurate are AI detectors? What independent studies found

  Nine independent tests from 2023 to 2026 in one table: false positives, misses, and where detectors break.

• Can AI detectors detect Claude, Gemini and DeepSeek, not just ChatGPT?

  Model-by-model results from independent tests, and what Turnitin, GPTZero, Pangram, Originality.ai and Copyleaks claim.

• Can AI detectors catch paraphrased or “humanized” AI text?

  Paraphrasers and humanizers versus detectors: what the studies found, and why vendors' claims disagree.

Schools and policies

• Universities that turned off AI detection, and why

  Eleven universities, from UCLA (2023) to the University of the Free State (2026), with dates and their own reasons.

• Are theses and dissertations checked for AI?

  Approval and disclosure rules at Toronto, Georgia, UCL, DCU and five more, whether your thesis goes through an AI detector, and how to declare AI use.

Work and hiring

• Do employers check cover letters and résumés for AI?

  Hiring-manager surveys, what studies show about AI cover letters and callbacks, employers' own AI rules, and the laws on automated screening.

• AI detectors and freelance writing: what clients check and how to protect yourself

  Platform rules on AI, how clients and agencies use detectors, what Google actually penalizes, and what to do when a client says your work is AI.