Whether you\u2019re marking essays or reviewing job applications or merely browsing the web and scrolling through social media, it\u2019s a sign of our times that you might find yourself wondering\u2014did an AI write this<\/a>?<\/p>\n There are, supposedly, telltale signs of AI writing, including the em dash<\/a>. There are also multiple tools available that check pieces of writing against combinations of these AI tics to tell you whether or not something was written by a human.<\/p>\n Can AI-produced text be as regularly identified as these tools claim, however? We decided to put them to the text and test: five different checkers against a selection of samples written either by me, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude.<\/p>\n I picked out a selection of introductions from articles I\u2019ve recently written<\/a> (all without the help of AI, by the way), then had AI bots write their own 150-word versions based on each article\u2019s title and premise.<\/p>\n Then, it was over to the AI detectors to see if they could tell the difference, and here are the results.<\/p>\n Pangram<\/p>\n Pangram<\/a> promises to be \u201can AI detector that actually works.\u201d You can run up to four queries a day for free, with much higher limits and extras such as plagiarism detection available with a subscription starting at $20 a month.<\/p>\n The good news for me was that both samples of my own writing showed up as 100 percent written by a human being\u2014and Pangram declared a \u201chigh\u201d level of confidence in each decision. Whatever my writing style is, it\u2019s not AI-like, apparently.<\/p>\n I gave Pangram some AI-written introductions from ChatGPT and Claude, and it correctly identified them both as 100 percent AI-written\u2014top marks for Pangram. It also explained some of the giveaways, like the phrase \u201cfrom the moment you \u2026\u201d.<\/p>\n 4 \/ 4 correct<\/p>\n Grammarly<\/p>\n Next up, Grammarly<\/a>. It\u2019s been around for years as a spelling and grammar helper, and now it does AI and AI detection as well. You get three free AI checks per day, with paid plans starting at $12 per month offering much higher limits (and a host of other features).<\/p>\n Again, the results were reassuring for how un-AI-like my writing is: Both my writing samples got a perfect score for being written without a machine. The text samples came back as having 0 percent AI text or AI text patterns in them.<\/p>\n The AI samples I tested Grammarly with were from Claude and Gemini, and these were marked as being 68 percent and 66 percent AI-written, respectively. Grammarly caught the AI characteristics, but wasn\u2019t fully convinced.<\/p>\n 4 \/ 4 correct<\/p>\n GPTZero<\/p>\n The stated aim of GPTZero<\/a> is to \u201cpreserve what\u2019s human,\u201d and that includes being able to spot sentences put together by AI. On a free account, you can scan up to 10,000 words every month, while paid plans start at $23.99 per month, letting you scan a lot more words and access a lot more features.<\/p>\n By this stage, I was getting confident that my writing was free from whatever it is that these detectors are looking for, and sure enough, GPTZero marked both my samples as written by a person: \u201cWe are highly confident this text is entirely human,\u201d I was told.<\/p>\n When met with writing samples from Gemini and ChatGPT, GPTZero correctly spotted them as AI-generated text they were\u2014and even pointed out the most AI-like sentences (though honestly, I struggled to spot the patterns in these flagged phrases).<\/p>\n 4 \/ 4 correct<\/p>\n Scribbr<\/p>\n Our fourth AI-detecting tool is Scribbr<\/a>, which offers a variety of other editing and proofreading services too. Its detector tool is completely free to use, and you don\u2019t even need to register an account to start checking text.<\/p>\n My own samples were cleared as being 100 percent written by a human. Although Scribbr does have a disclaimer saying that AI detectors aren\u2019t always fully reliable, it was certainly accurate in assessing my own writing.<\/p>\n However, the samples I fed in from ChatGPT and Claude were also marked as fully AI-free, which wasn\u2019t the case\u2014and Scribbr seemed very confident in its conclusions. Whatever it\u2019s doing to detect machine-made text, it needs to improve its methods.<\/p>\n 2 \/ 4 correct<\/p>\n Copyleaks<\/p>\n The fifth and final checker I tried was Copyleaks<\/a>, which has tools for detecting AI images and videos, too. I was able to scan four samples free of charge, though paid plans\u2014starting at $16.99 a month\u2014give you access to more detailed reports and extra features.<\/p>\n Like the other AI writing detectors in this list, Copyleaks gave my writing samples the all clear: They were both marked as being 100 percent free from AI. With these tools, at least, it doesn\u2019t seem like I\u2019ll be accused of writing with AI anytime soon.<\/p>\n When I tried writing samples from Claude and Gemini, the former was marked as being 0 percent AI-written, and the latter was rated as 100 percent AI-written\u2014so it was half right. Like Scribbr, there seems to be something off with the AI detection calibration.<\/p>\n 3 \/ 4 correct<\/p>\n The verdict<\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t quite sure what to expect from these AI writing detectors, which was part of why I wanted to test them out. Personally, I feel like I\u2019ve got a pretty good idea of what AI writing looks like, but it\u2019s hard to identify specific patterns and tells (well, except for \u2018it\u2019s not x, it\u2019s y\u2019).<\/p>\n Based on my tests, these AI detectors really do work\u2014or at least most of them, most of the time. Human-written text was identified as such in every instance across all of these tools, perhaps showing it\u2019s easier to tell what hasn\u2019t been written by AI than what has.<\/p>\n AI detection wasn\u2019t as foolproof, though it depends on the checker you\u2019re using. If you\u2019re serious about spotting AI writing, my advice would be to use two or three of these checkers in tandem, alongside other checks\u2014and perhaps to upgrade to tiers where you get detailed reports on the detector\u2019s reasoning.<\/p>\n Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Popular Science\u2019s parent company, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April 2025, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.<\/p>\n \t\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t 2025 PopSci Best of What\u2019s New<\/p>\n The 50 most important innovations of the year<\/p>\n \t\u00a0<\/p>\n David Nield produces how-to guides and explainers on everything from improving your smartphone photos<\/a> to boosting the security of your laptop<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get the Popular Science daily newsletter\ud83d\udca1 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,42467,66],"class_list":["post-111248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-evergreen","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/01-pangram.jpg\")
Pangram delivered on its promise to detect AI writing. David Niel<\/p>\n![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/02-grammarly.jpg\")
The Grammarly AI detector has a straightforward interface. David Niel<\/p>\n![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/03-gptzero.jpg\")
GPTZero is on a mission to \u201cpreserve what\u2019s human.\u201d David Nield<\/p>\n![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/04-scribbr.jpg\")
You don\u2019t even need to create an account to start checking with Scribbr. David Nield<\/p>\n![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/05-copyleaks.jpg\")
Copyleaks lets you get started with your own text or with an example. David Nield<\/p>\n![\"products](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/best-of-whats-new-2025-HERO.png\")
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