Pangram AI detector flags Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities as 65% AI-generated

marktenenholtz · x · 2026-09-25

The Pangram AI text detector analyzed the opening of Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" and judged it 65% AI-generated — a classic human-written text flagged as machine output.

Further experiments showed instability: feeding only the first paragraph returned a fully human verdict (0% AI on Pangram's page), while adding the second paragraph flipped the score. This exposes how unreliable AI detectors are on short texts and classic literary prose — Pangram itself admits limited confidence on short text and a 1-in-10,000 false positive rate. A serious caution for anyone using such tools to accuse students or writers of cheating.

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