OpenAI’s New Tool Aims to Detect Text Written by an AI
- Laurent Giret
- Feb 01, 2023
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OpenAI, the company developing the popular ChatGPT chatbot has launched a new tool that aims to identify text written by an AI. The new classifier tool is being released as a work-in-progress and the company emphasized that it currently has several limitations.
“In our evaluations on a “challenge set” of English texts, our classifier correctly identifies 26% of AI-written text (true positives) as “likely AI-written,” while incorrectly labeling human-written text as AI-written 9% of the time (false positives). Our classifier’s reliability typically improves as the length of the input text increases,” the company explained.
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OpenAI’s classifier is currently “very unreliable” on texts with less than 1,000 characters, and it also performs “significantly worse” in other languages than English. The company hopes that it can improve its new tool with user feedback and better-trained AI models. In the meantime, OpenAI says that its classifier “should not be used as a primary decision-making tool.”
Chatbots like ChatGPT have to potential to disrupt many industries, and they’re also a growing source of concern for educators and journalists. The impact of AI-generated fake news shouldn’t be underestimated, and we’re also seeing more and more schools and colleges banning ChatGPT to prevent plagiarism and misinformation.
“We are engaging with educators in the US to learn what they are seeing in their classrooms and to discuss ChatGPT’s capabilities and limitations, and we will continue to broaden our outreach as we learn,” OpenAI said yesterday. “These are important conversations to have as part of our mission is to deploy large language models safely, in direct contact with affected communities.”
Microsoft announced earlier this month a new multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI, and the company plans to integrate OpenAI’s technology into its consumer and enterprise products. Google is also seeing ChatGPT as a very serious threat to its search business, and the company is reportedly testing ChatGPT-like products internally. In an internal memo seen by CNBC, Google said that its Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) team has been “asked to prioritize working on a response to ChatGPT.”