A chart comparing AI detectors says most are barely better than a coin toss
burkov · x · 2026-07-23
The post argues that current AI-generated content detectors are close to useless when the task is only to decide between two classes: AI-generated or not AI-generated.
The chart compares multiple detectors such as Check for AI, Compilatio, Content at Scale, Crossplag, DetectGPT, GPT Zero, OpenAI Text Classifier, Turnitin, Writer, and Zero GPT. Most scores cluster around roughly coin-flip territory, with several tools in the 50%–70% range and a few slightly higher, but none looking reliably strong.
The takeaway is that detector accuracy remains poor enough that the author treats the problem as barely better than random guessing.
Related event: AI Content Detectors No Better Than a Coin Toss(2 posts)→
More from Research
- Researcher flags unresolved data transparency issues in compositionality evals — najoungkim · 2026-10-27
- Separate Forms from Estimators: Why Steer by Difference of Means When You Can Use SGD? — johnhewtt · 2026-10-27
- EMNLP paper probes why some LLM biases survive rewording while others don't — radamihalcea · 2026-10-27
- Datology webinar: Curation Studio matched top data baselines with under 20% compute — josh_wills · 2026-10-27
- KANLab: an interactive browser playground for Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks — Lukas Niehaus · 2026-10-27
- CMU's LLM2Cert synthesizes stability certificates verified via SMT and Lean — CarnegieMellonU · 2026-10-27