OpenAI Retires Its AI Detector After Experiencing Failure in Its Role

The creators of ChatGPT, OpenAI, have terminated support for their proprietary AI detector after consistently poor performance.

OpenAI, the developers behind ChatGPT, have decided to discontinue their own AI writing detector due to repeated failures.

The classifier was initially launched by OpenAI in January but its support abruptly ended on July 20, with the public only learning about it now.

OpenAI’s detector had a notorious reputation for its poor performance in detecting AI-generated content. The company openly acknowledged that it only had a 26% accuracy rate in recognizing AI content at the time of launch, and this barely improved during its short lifespan.

On the announcement page, the AI classifier’s blog post has been edited to include the following statement:

“As of July 20, 2023, the AI classifier is no longer available due to its low rate of accuracy. We are working to incorporate feedback and are currently researching more effective provenance techniques for text, and have made a commitment to develop and deploy mechanisms that enable users to understand if audio or visual content is AI-generated.”

OpenAI Shuts Down Unreliable AI Detector

AI detectors have a track record of producing unreliable results. Platforms like GPTZero rely on speculation and patterns rather than actual data from the text itself.

Ongoing investigations within the AI industry are exploring the possibility of watermarking or providing additional data within the text. This would function similarly to metadata in an image, which often includes information like the camera model and location.

AI detectors have led to false accusations of cheating, with platforms like Turnitin jeopardizing the academic careers of students, including potential law school graduates.

OpenAI has not provided any specific timeline for the introduction of a new classifier but has observed a potential decrease in traffic as students take a break for the summer.