Cited by 136Academic integrity and plagiarismAuthorship Attribution and ProfilingArtificial Intelligence in Education

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 23 of the 23 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 25 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

Detecting AI content in responses generated by ChatGPT, YouChat, and Chatsonic: The case of five AI content detection tools

Open access
Chaka Chaka·2023·Journal of Applied Learning & Teaching

Abstract

This paper set out to test the accuracy of five AI content tools, GPTZero, OpenAI Text Classifier, Writer.com’s AI Content Detector, Copyleaks AI Content Detector, and Giant Language model Test Room, to detect AI-generated content in the responses generated by ChatGPT, YouChat, and Chatsonic. The responses were generated from these three AI chatbots using English prompts related to applied English language studies. Then, the ChatGPT-generated responses were Google-translated into German, French, Spanish, Southern Sotho, and isiZulu, and inputted into GPTZero for it to detect the AI-generated content in them. Additionally, the ChatGPT-generated responses Google-translated into German, French and Spanish were inputted into Copyleaks AI Content Detector for it to detect the AI-generated content in them. For the ChatGPT-, YouChat-, and Chatsonic-generated responses, Copyleaks AI Content Detector emerged as the top-most performing AI content detector among the five AI content detectors. It was followed by OpenAI’s AI Text Classifier. Concerning the ChatGPT-generated responses that were Google-translated into five languages, GPTZero misidentified all of them as human-produced. For the ChatGPT-generated responses that were Google-translated into German, French and Spanish, Copyleaks AI Content Detector correctly identified three of the German-translated texts, five of the French-translated texts, and all the Spanish-translated texts as AI-generated. Thus, it is evident from this paper that all five AI content detectors seem not yet fully ready to accurately and convincingly detect AI-generated content from machine-generated texts in different contexts. This has dire consequences for AI-generated plagiarism in academic essay writing.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

This exploratory study tested five free AI-content detectors on English responses generated by ChatGPT, YouChat, and Chatsonic, plus Google-translated versions of ChatGPT responses. Copyleaks AI Content Detector ranked first for correct English-text identification, while GPTZero misclassified all translated ChatGPT responses in five languages as human-written.

Key findings

  • Across the three English response sets, the five detectors ranked by overall correct identification as: Copyleaks AI Content Detector (1), OpenAI AI Text Classifier (2), GPTZero (3), Writer.com’s AI Content Detector (4), and GLTR (5).
  • For ChatGPT-generated English responses, Copyleaks correctly classified 5 texts and misclassified 1; GPTZero correctly classified 4 and was indecisive about 2; Writer.com’s detector classified 5 inaccurately as human-generated and 1 accurately; GLTR correctly classified 1 and misclassified 5.
  • For YouChat-generated responses, Copyleaks correctly classified 5 and incorrectly classified 2; OpenAI AI Text Classifier correctly classified 3, misclassified 2, and was indecisive about 2; GPTZero correctly classified 1 and misclassified 6; GLTR misidentified all 7 as human-written.
  • For Chatsonic-generated responses, Copyleaks correctly classified 5 and misclassified 3; GPTZero correctly classified 3, misclassified 4, and was indecisive about 1; OpenAI AI Text Classifier correctly identified 2, detected 1 incorrectly, and was indecisive about 5; GLTR misclassified 6 and was indecisive about 2.
  • GPTZero incorrectly classified all ChatGPT-generated responses Google-translated into German, French, Spanish, Southern Sotho, and isiZulu as human-written; its highest perplexity scores were 2,478 (German), 221 (French), 361 (Spanish), 1,715 (Southern Sotho), and 938 (isiZulu). Copyleaks correctly classified 3 German-translated texts, 5 French-translated texts, and all Spanish-translated texts as AI-generated.

Methods

  • Exploratory study design. Three sets of English prompts in applied English language studies were inputted into ChatGPT, YouChat, and Chatsonic; ChatGPT prompts were queried on 31 January 2023, and YouChat and Chatsonic prompts on 07 March 2023.
  • Responses were inputted into five AI content detectors—GPTZero, OpenAI AI Text Classifier, Writer.com’s AI Content Detector, Copyleaks AI Content Detector, and Giant Language Model Test Room (GLTR)—in three phases from 30 March to 02 April 2023.
  • Phase 1 fed English-only responses into all five detectors. Phase 2 fed ChatGPT-generated responses Google-translated into German, French, Spanish, Southern Sotho, and isiZulu into GPTZero. Phase 3 fed German, French, and Spanish translations into Copyleaks AI Content Detector. Analysis compared correct classifications, misclassifications, indecisive results, and reported perplexity or probability percentages.

Limitations

  • The paper states a major limitation: it used free-to-use or non-premium versions of the AI content detectors; when data were collected, all five detectors had only free public versions.
  • Evident from the text: the dataset is small and limited to prompts from applied English language studies, and only one detector (GPTZero) was used for the five translated languages while Copyleaks was used for three because it did not support Southern Sotho and isiZulu.
  • Evident from the text: no texts were deliberately manipulated through editing, paraphrasing, or adding extra spaces, so the study did not test detector robustness against such evasion methods.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.37074/jalt.2023.6.2.12

Cites

23 of 23 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

0 of 25 cited sources checked · 0 supported · 0 flagged

Show all 44 claims

  • It may state two separate claims as one. 35
  • Probably not a substantial claim. 17
  • The quote only partly states this claim. 2
53 of 53
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The AI-generated responses from ChatGPT, YouChat, and Chatsonic, elicited by the specific prompts used, are representative of AI-generated academic content in general.

    “The prompts for these three AI chatbots were based on some of the aspects of applied English language studies (AELS).”
    “The three sets of AI-generated English responses and the ChatGPT-generated English responses that were Google-translated into the five languages specified above constituted the datasets for this study.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The Google Translate translations of the ChatGPT-generated English responses into German, French, Spanish, Southern Sotho, and isiZulu accurately preserve the content such that detection results on the translated texts reflect the tools' ability to detect AI content in those languages.

    “In the second phase, the ChatGPT-generated responses were machinetranslated into five languages using Google Translate and inputted into GPTZero.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The free-to-use or non-premium versions of the five AI content detectors are equivalent to their premium versions for the purpose of evaluating their accuracy.

    “All of the five AI content detectors reviewed above were employed in this paper in their free-to-use or non-premium versions.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The classification outputs of the AI content detection tools (e.g., AI-generated vs human-generated, perplexity scores, probability percentages) are valid indicators of their accuracy in detecting AI-generated content.

    “The idea of classified is a proxy for predicted as these tools attempt to predict whether a given text response is AI-or human-generated more than just classifying a given text.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The ChatGPT-generated responses Google-translated into German, French, Spanish, Southern Sotho, and (isi)Zulu remain AI-generated texts for the purpose of detection.

    “All the ChatGPTgenerated responses were subjected to GPTZero for it to detect if they were AI-generated or human-written (see Table 2).”
    “all the ChatGPT-generated responses, which were Google-translated into the three languages as mentioned above, were subjected to Copyleaks AI Content Detector for it to detect whether they were AI-generated or not (see Table 3).”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The accuracy and correctness of the Google-translated texts is not relevant to testing the detectors' ability to classify them as machine-generated.

    “In this section, what is at issue is not the accuracy and correctness of the Google-translated texts for all five languages but rather GPTZero's ability to classify them correctly as machine-generated texts.”
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Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.

  • Chatsonic perplexity maximum changes from 118 to 167

    Minor

    The results report 118 as GPTZero's highest perplexity score for Chatsonic texts, whereas the discussion reports 167. The results assign 167 to the YouChat texts instead.

  • Conflicting Copyleaks percentage for a ChatGPT-generated text

    Minor

    The results give 19.5% for Copyleaks' human-generated classification in the ChatGPT set, but the discussion gives 19.4%.

  • Translated-text perplexity limits are reversed

    Minor

    The results present 2,478 as the German texts' lowest score by listing it second after "high and lowest," but the discussion explicitly identifies 2,478 as their highest score. The same reversal applies to the Southern Sotho and (isi)Zulu figures.

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Citations

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Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. Gerring, J., Mahomey, J., & Elman, C. (2020). Introduction. In C. Elman, J. Gerring & J. Mahoney (Eds.), The production of knowledge: Enhancing progress in social science (pp. 1-14). Cambridge University Press.
  2. Chaka Chaka. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. org/10.1038/d41586-022-04397-7. · DOI · Paper page

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Metadata

Authors
Chaka, C.
Affiliations
University of South Africa (ZA)
Corresponding author
Chaka Chaka
Venue
Journal of Applied Learning & Teaching
Published
2023-07-24
Volume
6
Issue
2
ISSN
2591-801X (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W4385156842
Cited by
132
References
22
Citations by year
2026: 20 · 2025: 43 · 2024: 60 · 2023: 9
FWCI
33.10
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by
Locations
Journal of Applied Learning & Teaching (publishedVersion, cc-by)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Education › Academic integrity and plagiarism
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Authorship Attribution and Profiling
  • Social Sciences › Education › Artificial Intelligence in Education
Keywords
AI-generated text detection, ChatGPT, GPTZero, multilingual translation, machine translation, academic plagiarism, English language teaching

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