GPTZero Brief Review
GPTZero (2024) , described as “bring[ing] transparency to humans navigating a world filled with AI content” on its homepage, provides educators an opportunity to “restore confidence and understanding” with students by detecting AI generated content. According to The Tech Advocate writer Matthew Lynch (2023), GPTZero is a significant resource due to its accuracy in detecting AI generated content to help maintain integrity in human-created works. Even though GPTZero is not not 100% reliable in detecting AI generated content, it still boasts a high degree of accuracy (Lynch, 2023). As I log in and initially explore GPTZero, I notice the AI scan is in the center of the dashboard; it is there, waiting to be populated with text. The text box also privileges the idea of finding human writing over sussing out AI writing by asking: “Was this text written by a human or AI?” The prompt also cautions users that if they are seeking to detect “AI involvement” – again, contributing to a narrative that human creation is privileged and not just identifying AI generated content. When compared to Turnitin’s (2024a) AI writing detection tool, which promises to “help educators identify when AI writing tools such as ChatGPT have been used in students’ submissions,” the goal seems to not be to penalize students it seems to be focused on first identifying what the student created on their own and opening up a conversation about when AI text has likely been used. GPTZero provides a “probability breakdown” of a spectrum of human and AI writing. Turnitin (2024b) provides a percentage that states “How much of the submission has been generated by AI” which is absolute. GPTZero emphasizes that it is not 100% accurate and leaves the implication open that a human needs to do more work to ascertain if there are any integrity violations. In fact, the report generated states specifically that the “report should not be used to punish students” (GPTZero, AI scan, January 28, 2024). One question I am wondering about the tool is: Where does the extensive database of human written content writing is compared against come from?
References
GPTZero. (2024). The best AI checker for teachers. GPTZero. https://gptzero.me/educators
Lynch, M. (n.d.). What is GPTZero? How to use it to detect AI-generated text. Tech Advocate. https://www.thetechedvocate.org/what-is-gptzero-how-to-use-it-to-detect-ai-generated-text/
Tian, E., & Cui, A. (2023). GPTZero: Towards detection of AI-generated text using zero-shot and supervised methods [Computer software]. https://gptzero.me/
Turnitin. (2024a). Turnitin’s AI detector capabilities. TurnitIn. https://www.turnitin.com/solutions/topics/ai-writing/ai-detector/
Turnitin. (2024b). Turnitin’s AI writing detection available now. Turnitin. https://www.turnitin.com/solutions/topics/ai-writing/
Educational Technology Blog 