Introduction to AI Detection and SEO Content

In today’s post we are going to be tackling AI detection and SEO content and its impacts on using AI assisted writing platforms like A-pro’s. First we’ll discuss what AI detection software is and how it works. Then we’ll review the literature on how effective AI Detection software is at determining weather or not a piece of text is AI generated. Finally we’ll chat about how we should consider using AI to create SEO content in regards to the presence of AI detection software and policies from the search engines themselves regarding the use of AI.

What is AI Detection Software

AI detection software refers to tools and services designed to determine whether a piece of text was generated by a large language model (LLM) like ChatGPT. Some companies offering AI detection include the following:

Originality.ai: Geared towards web content and advertises itself as a way to prove content is written by a human.
GPTZero: Developed specifically for educational institutions, it aims to identify AI-generated text in student submissions .
Turnitin: Traditionally a plagiarism detection tool, it has incorporated AI detection features to enhance its capabilities.
Copyleaks: Offers AI detection solutions with claims of high accuracy and integration capabilities with Learning Management Systems.

These kinds of software primary works by employing machine learning and natural language processing, technologies often thought of as AI, to determine whether or not a piece of text was AI or human generated. Typically this involves using classifiers based on tone, style, and grammar to try to identify patterns typical of AI content. AI detection models frequently use embeddings and other techniques from Large Language Models (LLMs) to in short reverse engineer text generation to try to determine if a piece of text is AI generated. Usually AI Detection acts as a classifier. But rather than giving a simple yes/no regarding weather or not a piece of text is AI generated. It gives a confidence score indicating the likelihood of a text being AI-generated. This is because statistically it’s more honest for these models to give the user a sense of how likely the model’s determination is either a false positive or negative. Other measures that are sometimes employed include perplexity and burstiness.

Perplexity

Perplexity refers to a measure of predictability. Typically AI models generate more predictable text with a lower perplexity score. This is more true with the default settings in most AI text generation where the assumption is that the user wants more accurate or expected text, though many tools include a-pro allows for users to adjust the amount of randomness they want their AI model to create.

However relying on perplexity as a measure has drawbacks. Certain kinds of articles or blogs would typically be very predictable. A how to article for example should offer a step by step set of instructions. A product description would likely in fact describe a product. Also many human writers do have a predictable writing style. Using perplexity as a primary means of detecting AI can lead to many false positives.

Burstiness

Burstiness assesses the variation in sentence structure and length within a text. The theory goes that human writing tends to have more diverse sentence lengths and structures, while AI-generated content often exhibits more uniformity. This too can be a mixed bag when it comes to reliability. Human writing can exhibit consistency in terms of sentence length. And AI writing can also exhibit burstiness in certain contexts.

Limitations of AI Detection Software

As has already been hinted at there are limitations to AI detection software. AI text generation is a rapidly developing field and detection tools will tend to lag in adjusting to these changes. It takes time for developers to understand a development in AI generation and then develop detection tools in response. In this academic study from the International Journal for Education Integrity showed that AI detection tools were more accurate when labeling content written by older chatgpt models it was less accurate when put up against more recent models available on chatgpt. The study also found that for some of it’s human written control documents, the AI detection software tested would sometimes incorrectly label the text as AI generated.

Considerations when using AI writing assistants.

When using a product like a-pro to create content, if your audience expects transparency when using AI. We’d recommend being transparent as matter of good faith towards the audience. A-pro’s guided workflow is a human in the loop system that allows users to add their own touches and complete freedom to edit outputs through out the drafting process as well as adjust randomness in the generation process. We aim to be a mid point between a simple prompt to text tool like chatgpt and completely writing a article from scratch.

Does Google care?

Beyond just audience expectations a frequent question we’ve received is weather or not search engines like Google’s care about weather or not content is AI generated. This was one of our first considerations when developing A-pro and to answer the question directly, no google doesn’t care according to their own published policies. In Google’s own words they reward high quality content however it’s produced. Google strives to return results that demonstrates expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. As long as AI assisted content achieves these goals, google doesn’t care if it was AI or human generated. Google does have it’s own AI detection capabilities but it directed towards detecting spammy or manipulative content that lacks quality or is produced with the intention to deceive. A-pro uses additional machine learning models to produce SEO scores that aims to identify text that google would determine as keyword stuffing or other spammy practices. In the real world articles generated via AI tools have had success in the google search rankings as reported in this article.

Recommendations

Along with following our guides on seo content we recommend the following regardless of weather you use AI or not:

Focus on quality: create value for users regardless of the tool
Write for humans: Google’s seo guidelines and likely your audience expect content designed for people. Prioritize user experience and utility over focusing on manipulating search rankings.
Evaluate content using EEAT: again this stands for expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
consider adding bylines or disclosures about the use of AI tools if your audience would like transparency in these cases

While AI detection tools are becoming more sophisticated along with AI generation, there’s no need for alarm at the moment as Google and other search engines are not targeting AI generated content specifically for de-ranking. But incorporating human oversight and keeping up to date on search engine policy changes are recommended to maintain an overall good SEO strategy. We at A-pro are dedicated to staying on top of any potential changes and making sure our services deliver great content for SEO rankings and human use. We closely follow changes from google and other search engines to make sure our models produce high quality output and have deliberately designed our product to be an assistant not a replacement for people. We hope this article helps you with better understanding AI Detection and SEO Content.

Takeaways

AI detection software exists and has mixed results.
Google does not penalize AI content just on the basis of it being AI generated.
Integrating human oversight and direction is good practice for both transparency and quality control.

AI Detection and SEO Content: What matters?