Should you Rely on AI Content Detectors? (A Critical Look)

With the surge in AI content writing tools, there are also advancements in AI content detectors.

Just for one simple REASON!

Google favours HIGH-QUALITY, ORIGINAL content. A study conducted by Gotch SEO Academy further emphasises this fact.

However, that doesn’t mean you can’t use AI in your content workflow, nor am I questioning these tools’ capability. (That’s not the point of discussion in this post).

Nevertheless, Google can detect AI-generated content and de-index it in search results. You would never want that for your website or blog content.

That’s where AI content detectors come in handy, helping you detect pieces of content written by AI. This is crucial to discovering any misinformation or low-quality content that AI writing tools MAY submit.

But, are AI content detectors accurate?

Before, diving into the accuracy…..let’s understand……

What do AI content detectors look for?

Simply put, they look for text that looks like it was written by an AI tool rather than a human being. They look at the words used, sentence structure, and the contextual meaning of the text and compare them with the huge data of known AI-generated and human-written content.

This helps them spot the difference between AI and human-generated content.

In the image below, the AI content detector has highlighted all the AI-generated text.

 With AI content detection, you can maintain your brand voice, identity, and credibility, giving you the desired ROI on your marketing efforts.

Are AI content detectors accurate?

Let’s learn this from an experiment I conducted with my 5 blog articles.

I randomly chose 5 articles from my blog (see the list below), which I know are 100% humanly generated.

• Social Media Marketing Ideas for Doctors
• How do you choose the right healthcare marketing agency?
• How do you get interesting health topics for your blog?
• How to create your Content Marketing Strategy?
• How do you stay focused on your goals while working from home?

Further, I also used ChatGPT to write articles on these same topics. (However, ChatGPT gave me a shorter article despite mentioning the word count and missed substantial information)

 Next, I mixed human-written and AI-generated content on these topics to generate a MIXED article (Mixed with more human text and mixed with more AI text). I also used a humanisation tool, humanize AI that paraphrases AI-generated text to look like a human-written one.

I analysed each type of content using the top 3 AI content detectors (free version): Surfer, Ahrefs, and GPTZero. I also repeated the analysis at a different date.

Here are the results of my analysis:

Social Media Marketing Ideas for Doctors – 2^nd Jan 2025 Vs 24^th Feb 2025

Type of content	Surfer (2nd Jan)	Surfer (24th Feb)
Human written	100% human	100% human
AI-written	80% AI	99% AI
Mixed with more human written	17% AI	34% AI
Mixed with more AI-written	71% AI	52% AI
Humanize AI	71% AI	71% AI

Type of content	Ahrefs (2nd Jan)	Ahrefs (24th Feb)
Human written	80% in the analysis of 295 words only	80% AI in analysis of 297 words
AI-written	80% AI in the analysis of 300 words	80% AI in the analysis of 300 words
Mixed with more human written	80% AI in the analysis of 300 words	70% AI in the analysis of 310 words
Mixed with more AI-written	80% AI in the analysis of 308 words	70% AI in the analysis of 308 words
Humanize AI	80% AI in the analysis of 300 words	80% AI in the analysis of 300 words

Type of content	GPTZer0 (2nd Jan)	GPTZero (24th Feb)
Human written	98% human	98% human
AI-written	79% AI	97% AI
Mixed with more human written	88% human	96% human
Mixed with more AI-written	56% AI	34% AI
Humanize AI	90% human	82% human

How do you choose the right healthcare marketing agency? – 13^th Jan 2025 Vs 28^th Feb 2025

Type of content	Surfer (13th Jan)	Surfer (28th Feb)
Human written	100% human	100% human
AI-written	92% AI	42% AI
Mixed with more human written	100% human	100% human
Mixed with more AI-written	37% AI	10% AI
Humanize AI	3% AI	3% AI

Type of content	Ahrefs (13th Jan)	Ahrefs (28th Feb)
Human written	80% AI in the analysis of 318 words	80% AI in the analysis of 318 words
AI-written	80% AI in the analysis of 320 words	80% AI in the analysis of 320 words
Mixed with more human written	70% AI in the analysis of 300 words	80% AI in the analysis of 300 words
Mixed with more AI-written	80% AI in the analysis of 318 words	80% AI in the analysis of 318 words
Humanize AI	80% AI in the analysis of 291 words	80% AI in the analysis of 291 words

Type of content	GPTZero (13th Jan)	GPTZero (28th Feb)
Human written	99% human	98% human
AI-written	100% AI	100% AI
Mixed with more human written	88% human	88% human
Mixed with more AI-written	52% AI	87% AI
Humanize AI	90% AI	69% AI

How to get interesting health topics for your blog? – 13^th Jan 2025 Vs 1^st March 2025

Type of content	Surfer (13th Jan)	Surfer (1st March)
Human written	100% human	100% human
AI-written	98% AI	66% AI
Mixed with more human written	100% human	100% human
Mixed with more AI-written	97% AI	67% AI
Humanize AI	71% AI	59% AI

Type of content	Ahrefs (13th Jan)	Ahrefs (1st March)
Human written	80% AI in the analysis of 369 words	80% AI in the analysis of 369 words
AI-written	80% AI in the analysis of 320 words	80% AI in the analysis of 320 words
Mixed with more human written	80% AI in the analysis of 332 words	80% AI in the analysis of 332 words
Mixed with more AI-written	80% AI in the analysis of 332 words	80% AI in the analysis of 332 words
Humanize AI	80% AI in the analysis of 325 words	80% AI in the analysis of 325 words

Type of content	GPTZero (13th Jan)	GPTZero (1st March)
Human written	99% human	98% human
AI-written	100% AI	99% AI
Mixed with more human written	100% human	99% human
Mixed with more AI-written	98% AI	97% AI
Humanize AI	71% AI	96% AI

How to create your content marketing strategy? – 17^th Jan 2025 Vs 6^th March 2025

Type of content	Surfer (17th Jan)	Surfer (6th March)
Human written	100% human	100% human
AI-written	48% AI	48% AI
Mixed with more human written	99% human	99% human
Mixed with more AI-written	83% human	62% AI
Humanize AI	47% AI	48% AI

Type of content	Ahrefs (17th Jan)	Ahrefs (6th March)
Human written	80% AI in the analysis of 313 words	80% AI in the analysis of 313 words
AI-written	80% AI in the analysis of 318 words	80% AI in the analysis of 318 words
Mixed with more human written	80% AI in the analysis of 332 words	80% AI in the analysis of 332 words
Mixed with more AI-written	80% AI in the analysis of 328 words	80% AI in the analysis of 328 words
Humanize AI	80% AI in the analysis of 305 words	80% AI in the analysis of 305 words

Type of content	GPTZero (17th Jan)	GPTZero (6th March)
Human written	96% human	96% human
AI-written	100% AI	100% AI
Mixed with more human written	89% human	77% human
Mixed with more AI-written	71% AI	63% AI
Humanize AI	99% AI	98% AI

How to Stay Focused on your Goals while working from home? – 17th Jan 2025 Vs 6th March 2025

Type of content	Surfer (17th Jan)	Surfer (6th March)
Human written	100% human	99% human
AI-written	100% AI	100% AI
Mixed with more human written	80% human	99% human
Mixed with more AI-written	76% AI	67% AI
Humanize AI	100% AI	100% AI

Type of content	Ahrefs (17th Jan)	Ahrefs (6th March)
Human written	80% AI in the analysis of 353 words	80% AI in the analysis of 353 words
AI-written	80% AI in the analysis of 337 words	80% AI in the analysis of 337 words
Mixed with more human written	80% AI in the analysis of 334 words	80% AI in the analysis of 334 words
Mixed with more AI-written	80% AI in the analysis of 371 words	80% AI in the analysis of 371 words
Humanize AI	80% AI in the analysis of 332 words	80% AI in the analysis of 332 words

Type of content	GPTZero (17th Jan)	GPTZero (6th March)
Human written	94% human	100% human
AI-written	100% AI	100% AI
Mixed with more human written	90% human	91% human
Mixed with more AI-written	76% AI	54% AI
Humanize AI	94% AI	99% AI

As you can see, results from AI content detectors can have false positives and negatives.

A human-written text mistakenly marked as AI content is a FALSE POSITIVE.

AI-generated text mistakenly marked as 100% human is classified as FALSE NEGATIVE.

Further, content AI detection varies with time, showing different results on different dates.

These errors occur due to the following reasons:

• Limitations of training data – Humans have a diverse writing style, whereas content AI detectors are trained on pre-defined human and AI-generated text. This can lead to misinterpretations.

• Complexity of language – As more and more AI tools are designed to mimic human writing, the complexity of language increases and makes it more difficult to distinguish between the two.

• Evolving AI technology – As AI content writing tools evolve, content detection tools don’t upgrade with the same speed, making detection methods more challenging.

• Paraphrasing and rewriting – With simple paraphrasing or slight changes to the sentence structure, it has become easy to trick AI content detectors and surpass AI detection.

So, why worry about AI content detection?

It’s reasonable for you to think so when AI content detectors are not 100% accurate. But you can’t pass off with any content, as it’s the question of the authenticity of your brand.

AI-generated content may have:

• Lack of your brand voice
• Misinformation
• Outdated facts

Therefore, AI content detectors are crucial to reviewing any content you publish for your brand.

However, to beat the challenge of the accuracy of these detectors:

How have you used these AI content detectors? Share your experiences and thoughts in the comments below.