AI Policies | Ethical AI Use | AI Proofreading | Humanizing AI Text | AI Limitations
In this blog, we’ll talk about how to humanize AI-generated text. I want to be very clear – we don’t recommend using AI-generated content in any of your academic papers. However, we’re living in an era of AI, and there might be times when you want to incorporate text snippets from ChatGPT into your work. If you choose to do this, be extremely cautious. AI detectors can flag such content, and you will be accused of committing plagiarism. It’s very important that you rewrite and humanize the text before including any AI-generated material in your paper.
1. AI text vs. Human text
Before we look into ways to humanize AI text, you should first understand the basic characteristics of AI text and how AI detectors manage to identify them. I have asked ChatGPT to write a few sentences about social media and this is what I got.
Let me copy the text and run it through an AI detector. Let’s use the free version of the online tool WordPotter.Ai. Let paste the text and press the “Run AI check” button. As you can see, the AI detector flags the text as 100% AI, which is not surprising – we did generate this text using ChatGPT.
There are four main reasons why the AI detector was able to correctly identify this as an AI-generated text:
Let’s go through each of these factors in detail one by one.
2. Sentence length
ChatGPT and other AI tools tend to write passages that contain sentences of similar length. If we look at the sentences in the passage, they are all between 24 and 25 words in length. This normally doesn’t happen with human text. When humans write, they use a mix of short and long sentences within a paragraph to create a natural flow. That’s one of the things that make the human text feel more dynamic and engaging.
✖ AI-generated passages typically contain sentences of similar length
In today’s world, Social media has become an integral part of modern life, influencing how we communicate and consume information. Before delving into the benefits of social media, it is essential to grasp the origins of social media and how it became a gamechanger. Look no further—social media is here to stay and conquer its reach across the globe and has woven itself into the fabric of daily life.
3. Repetitive phrases
ChatGPT often uses repetitive phrases in the text they generate. This makes it easy for AI detectors to identify whether the text was written by humans or AI. For example, let’s ask ChatGPT to write something about mental health.
Now let’s compare both pieces of text generated by ChatGPT. You will notice that there is a lot of repetition between both passages. Both passages start with the phrase “In today’s world”, then we have the phrase “an integral part” in both passages. In the first passage, we have the phrase “Before delving into” and in the second passage we have “Before diving into”, which are quite similar. Then we have the phrases “is essential to” and “woven itself into the fabric of daily life” which appear in both passages word for word. This is one of the reasons why AI-generated text is easily identified and flagged by AI detectors.
✸ Passage from ChatGPT about Social media
In today’s world, Social media has become an integral part of modern life, influencing how we communicate and consume information. Before delving into the benefits of social media, it is essential to grasp the origins of social media and how it became a gamechanger. Look no further—social media is here to stay and conquer its reach across the globe and has woven itself into the fabric of daily life.
✸ Passage from ChatGPT about Mental health
In today’s world, Mental health has become an integral part of our well-being, influencing how we navigate daily life, build relationships, and cope with challenges. Before diving into the complexities of mental health, it is essential to understand what it truly encompasses. Mental health awareness has spread worldwide and woven itself into the fabric of daily life.
4. Fluff and Clichés
Look at the phrases “In today’s world” and “Look no further”. These are what we call clichés or fluff. It means that these phrases do not add much value to the text. If we were to remove them, the text would still read fine. If you had spent some time with ChatGPT you might have probably noticed that ChatGPT loves to load its responses with cliches and fluff. You must remove these phrases to humanize AI text.
✖ AI-generated text contains fluff and clichés that don’t add much value to the text
In today’s world, Social media has become an integral part of modern life, influencing how we communicate and consume information. Before delving into the benefits of social media, it is essential to grasp the origins of social media and how it became a gamechanger. Look no further—social media is here to stay and conquer its reach across the globe and has woven itself into the fabric of daily life.
5. Outdated language
ChatGPT often uses vocabulary that is not typically used in everyday conversations. The word choices can sound overly formal and outdated, something you would typically find in old books or official documents.
For example, take the phrase “Before delving into the benefits of”. We don’t say this in normal conversation. We would probably say “Before we get into the benefits of”.
Instead of saying “It is essential to grasp the origins of,” we’d say something simpler, like “It’s important to understand where it all started.”
✖ Outdated and overly formal language
Before delving into the benefits of social media, it is essential to grasp the origins of social media and how it became a gamechanger.
✔ Everyday conversational language
Before we get into the benefits of social media, it is important to understand where it all started.
Look at the following sentence ChatGPT has generated – “Social media is here to stay and conquer its reach across the globe and has woven itself into the fabric of daily life”. Who talks like this? It sounds formal and poetic at the same time. We could simply say, “Social media is now everywhere and is part of our everyday life.”
✖ Outdated and overly formal language
Social media is here to stay and conquer its reach across the globe and has woven itself into the fabric of daily life.
✔ Everyday conversational language
Social media is now everywhere and part of our everyday life.
6. Rewriting and humanizing text
✔ Rewritten and humanized text
Social media is a digital platform that connects people, businesses, and communities worldwide. Before we get into the benefits of social media, it is important to understand where it all started. Social media is now everywhere and part of everyday life.
Here is the rewritten passage. As you can see now it sounds more direct and natural. The sentences vary in length, and we’ve cut out all the clichés and unnecessary fluff. Now, let’s put this modified version through the AI detector and check the results.
The detector classifies the text as human-written, which makes sense because we took the original ChatGPT text and made substantial changes to humanize it, and it worked.
7. Summary
Humanizing AI text is a skill you must develop if you are planning to use ChatGPT generated text in your papers. To summarize what we discussed in this blog, never every copy and paste AI generated text directly into your paper. It is okay to use the AI generated text as a starting point to get some writing ideas. Please bear in mind that you must rewrite and refine it thoroughly to reflect your writing style before using it in your paper.
