The Ultimate Guide to AI Content Detection Tools in 2024

Every day, we're bombarded with news about AI - some hail it as a revolutionary force, while others warn of potential dangers to humanity. Regardless of where you stand, one thing is clear: AI technology is advancing rapidly, and we must adapt to this new reality.

Currently, the two AI applications most commonly encountered by the average person are AI content generators and AI content detectors. Today, we'll focus on the latter - just how reliable are these tools that claim to identify AI-generated content?

Spoiler alert: none of these tools are perfect. But that's to be expected, given the breakneck pace of AI development. Both content generation and detection tools are constantly evolving. The million-dollar question is: can the detectors keep up with the generators?

After extensive testing of numerous AI content detection tools, I've narrowed it down to the top 6 products. Let's dive in and see what they have to offer!

The 6 Best AI Content Detection Tools at a Glance

TraceGPT - Highest Accuracy
Winston AI - Best Integration Capabilities
Hive - Top Free Option
GPTZero - Extra Writing Analysis Features
Originality.ai - Flexible Detection Models Based on Risk Tolerance
Smodin - Most Cost-Effective Unlimited Use Option

How Did We Choose the Best AI Content Detection Tools?

You might be wondering, "What sets this list apart from all the others out there?" Well, for starters, I'm not looking for tools that "detect and rewrite AI-sounding content." My focus is on finding detectors that genuinely help identify AI content - whether you're a teacher, content manager, or anyone else who wants to ensure they're reading human-created content.

Secondly, I didn't just rely on marketing materials and user reviews. I invested dozens of hours personally researching and testing these AI content detection tools.

So, how did I go about testing AI-generated content? Here's my methodology:

I started with a topic I knew was 100% human-written: a previous article I'd authored titled "How to Change Your Passwords in 6 Steps."
Next, I needed AI-generated content on the same topic. I prompted ChatGPT (V3.5) and Claude (V3 Sonnet) to write 1500-word articles on "how to change your passwords." (Fun fact: both AIs were initially reluctant to write such long pieces, but I managed to persuade them. Later, I discovered some detection tools had character limits, so I trimmed each article to around 700 words to ensure consistency across all tools.)
Finally, I created a mixed content piece, starting with my human-written article and ending with ChatGPT's text.

In the end, I tested each tool with four text samples: Human, ChatGPT, Claude, and Mixed content.

During the testing process, I focused on several key aspects:

Ease of use: Is the tool user-friendly? Are there any prohibitive restrictions?
Accuracy: How well does the tool detect AI-generated content? The best AI content detectors should minimize false positives and negatives, providing relatively reliable results. While this field is rapidly evolving, I aimed for at least 75% confidence in the results. (Is that bar too low? Perhaps. But it's the current reality.)
Interpretability: Closely related to accuracy is interpretability. Can the application detect AI content from multiple LLMs (e.g., GPT, Gemini, Llama, Claude, Falcon)? Can it distinguish between AI, human, and mixed (AI+human) content? Does it provide sentence-level AI highlighting and reporting?
Additional features: I also looked for extras like browser extensions, plagiarism checkers, APIs, or integrations with other tools (e.g., Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Canvas, Blackboard, or other classroom applications and LMS platforms).
Scalability: Lastly, I considered how much content the application could handle without compromising accuracy or affordability. In other words, is the tool limited to 1500 words, or can it analyze larger volumes of text?

After careful evaluation, I selected the 6 best AI content detection tools from over 30 candidates.

The Best AI Content Detection Tools: A Comprehensive Overview

Tool Name	Accuracy	Extra Features	Pricing
TraceGPT	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Nearly perfect (and confident)	Plagiarism check, author verification, Chrome extension, custom GPT	Starting at $5.99 for 20 pages (1 page = 275 words)
Winston AI	⭐⭐⭐⭐ Misidentified Claude as human; otherwise good	Plagiarism check, readability score, document/image/handwriting scan (OCR), browser extensions, custom GPT, Zapier integration	From $12/month (80k words) or $19/month (200k words)
Hive	⭐⭐⭐⭐ Very confident, but completely wrong on Claude	Chrome extension	Free
GPTZero	⭐⭐⭐⭐ Poor performance on Claude; otherwise decent	Chrome extension, plagiarism check, API access, integrations	Basic free plan with 10k words/month; premium plans from $10/month
Originality.ai	⭐⭐⭐ Variable performance; good on ChatGPT, average on others	Plagiarism check, readability analysis, automatic fact-checking, API access	From $14.95/month or $30 pay-as-you-go
Smodin	⭐⭐⭐ Good except for Claude; but less confident	Plagiarism check, summary generation, rewriting and writing (generative AI)	Limited free plan with 5 uses/week; paid plans from $12/month

TraceGPT: The Gold Standard for Accuracy

TraceGPT (also known as AI Plagiarism Checker & ChatGPT Content AI Detector) is part of PlagiarismCheck.org.

TraceGPT Accuracy: Nearly Perfect (and Confident)

TraceGPT scored full marks for accuracy (and bonus points for speed!). Here are the test results:

Human: 0.00% likely AI-generated
ChatGPT: 99.91% likely AI-generated
Claude: 99.93% likely AI-generated
Mixed: 46.02% likely AI-generated

How to Use

To use this AI content detector, you'll need to register an account (personal or team/organization). Then, you can either copy/paste text directly into the application or upload files (.doc/.docx/.txt/.odt/.rtf/.pdf). Click "Continue," and TraceGPT quickly returns results, highlighting text it believes to be AI-generated. Note: The AI detector can process up to 307,200 characters (about 170 pages) at once. Not too shabby!

For example, with the mixed content, it determined that 46.02% of the content was likely AI-generated. On-screen, it highlighted the AI-detected content in different shades: possible (38.22%) and highly likely (7.80%). You can also download a PDF report for detailed results.

Additional Features

Plagiarism checker
Author verification tool
Chrome extension
Custom GPT

TraceGPT Pricing

While there's no explicit free plan, I was able to perform AI tests after creating an account without purchasing a subscription. If you want to use the plagiarism checking feature, you'll need to subscribe, starting at $5.99 for 20 pages (1 page = 275 words). TraceGPT is a free add-on to the Plagiarism Detector plan. They informed me that if you only need the AI detector, you can contact PlagiarismCheck.org for a custom plan.

Winston AI: The Integration Powerhouse

Winston AI is a dedicated AI content detector capable of identifying content generated by GPT-4, Google Gemini, and other LLMs.

Winston AI Accuracy: Misidentified Claude as Human; Otherwise Good

It failed one test by identifying Claude-generated content as likely human-written:

Human: Likely 85% human-written.
ChatGPT: Highly likely that an AI generation tool was used. Likely only 7% human-written.
Claude: Likely 82% human-written.
Mixed: Winston detected that 42% of the text is human-written. Our assessment is that an AI tool was likely used to generate all or most of the text. (Most of the text was correctly identified.)

How to Use

You'll need to create an account to use Winston AI, which comes with a 7-day free trial. Once set up, you have three ways to check content: paste text, upload a file, or import from a URL.

Winston AI requires a minimum of 500 characters for testing and then tells you the probability of the text being human or AI-generated on a scale of 0-100. You can also see AI sentences highlighted in the results and generate shareable PDF reports.

Additional Features

Plagiarism checker
Readability scoring
Document, image, and handwriting scanning (OCR)
Multiple browser extensions (Microsoft Edge, Opera, Firefox, Google Chrome)
Custom GPT

Winston AI also integrates with Blackboard and Google Classroom, and enterprises can access the tool via API to integrate it into their own systems. Alternatively, you can integrate Winston AI with Zapier to connect it to all the other apps you use, automating your AI content detection workflows.

Winston AI Pricing

The advertised free account is actually a 7-day free trial limited to 2,000 words. Premium plans start at $12/month (80k words) or $19/month (200k words). Custom plans are available for larger-scale usage.

Hive: The Best Free AI Content Detector

The Hive Moderation AI-generated content detection tool is part of Hive's automatic content moderation toolkit. It can also detect AI-generated images, videos, and audio.

Accuracy: Very Confident, but Completely Wrong on Claude

Hive failed the Claude test but detected other content types accurately:

Human: 0% - The input is unlikely to contain AI-generated text.
ChatGPT: 99.9% - The input is very likely to contain AI-generated text.
Claude: 0% - The input is unlikely to contain AI-generated text.
Mixed: 99.9% - The input is very likely to contain AI-generated text. (And it correctly highlighted the human and AI portions of the content.)

How to Use

You don't need an account to use Hive's AI text detector. Simply paste your text (up to 8,192 characters) into the input box. The text must be over 750 characters (preferably 1,500 characters) for a fair result.

Hive then provides a probability score indicating the likelihood of AI-generated content and highlights the affected portions. It's that simple - no other reports to download, but for a free tool, it's more than adequate.

Additional Features

Chrome extension

Hive Pricing: Free

GPTZero: Best for Extra Writing Analysis Features

GPTZero specializes in detecting content generated by GPT-3, GPT-4, Gemini, Claude, and Llama models. It uses a so-called seven-layer detection model to judge AI-generated content. Sounds sophisticated, right?

Accuracy: Poor Performance on Claude; Confused on Mixed Content, but Otherwise Decent

Although GPTZero claims to detect Claude-generated content, it clearly failed this test. It had no issues with human and ChatGPT tests but was uncertain about the mixed content.

Human: 95% human. We are very confident that this text is entirely human-written.
ChatGPT: 100% AI. We are very confident that this text is AI-generated.
Claude: 88% human / 5% mixed / 7% AI. We are moderately confident that this text is entirely human-written.
Mixed: 53% human / 5% mixed / 42% AI. We are uncertain about this document. If forced to classify, it would likely be considered human-written.

How to Use

GPTZero starts with a welcome tutorial, but it's easy to figure out on your own if you prefer to skip it. Like other apps, you can copy/paste the text you want to analyze (minimum 250 / maximum 5,000 characters) into the input box or upload a file. The scan completes quickly, and results appear directly on the screen.

In the scan summary, you'll see the document classification (e.g., "Human") and a probability distribution showing a sliding scale from human to mixed to AI. You can keep the report confidential, share it, or download a copy. Scan results are also stored in your dashboard for easy access.

The basic scan section highlights sentences likely to be AI-generated. Advanced plan users can access a deep scan that color-codes AI and human portions.

Finally, in the writing analysis section, you get a detailed breakdown including readability, average sentence length, and conciseness. The analysis also includes two AI scoring parameters: perplexity and burstiness:

Perplexity measures the complexity of the text. If GPTZero is "perplexed," the text is more likely to be human-written. Otherwise, it's probably AI-generated.
Burstiness evaluates sentence variation. AI tends to string together sentences of predictable, uniform length, while human writing has more variation in sentence length.

Additional Features

Google Chrome extension (called Origin)
Plagiarism checker
API access for large organizations
Multiple integrations, including Google Docs and Microsoft Word plugins, Canvas, Blackboard, and other classroom applications

GPTZero Pricing

There's a basic free plan allowing up to 10,000 words per month with 7 scans per hour. Premium plans start at $10/month (150k words), with options for organizations and enterprises at $23/month (500k words) offering advanced data security and SSO features.

Originality.ai: Best for Different Detection Models Based on Risk Tolerance

Originality.ai primarily targets content publishers, agencies, and writers, covering multiple models including GPT-4 and Claude 2.

Accuracy: Variable Performance; Good on ChatGPT, Average on Others

Originality.ai has two AI detection models - Standard 2.0 and Turbo 3.0 - which provide vastly different scores. They suggest using Turbo 3.0 if you have zero tolerance for AI content, as it's said to detect even the slightest trace of AI. If you're okay with minor AI usage (like AI-assisted editing), use Standard 2.0.

You can see how widely the results vary depending on the AI detection model used:

Human: 83% Original 17% AI (Standard 2.0) vs. 44% Original 56% AI (Turbo 3.0)
ChatGPT: 0% Original 100% AI (Standard 2.0) vs. 0% Original 100% AI (Turbo 3.0)
Claude: 100% Original 0% AI (Standard 2.0) vs. 49% Original 51% AI (Turbo 3.0)
Mixed: 50% Original 50% AI (Standard 2.0) vs. 9% Original 91% AI (Turbo 3.0)

Based on these results, Turbo 3.0 seems overly strict, while Standard 2.0 actually provides more accurate results.

How to Use

After creating an Originality.ai account, you can paste or write content in the input box, choose your AI detection model, and start scanning. While it's simple to use, I found the web app could be a bit faster.

In terms of results, you get an overall score and sentence-level highlighting, with all scans stored in your dashboard. You can also assign roles with different permission levels for each team member.

Additional Features

Plagiarism checker
Readability analysis
Automatic fact-checking
API for integration into tech stacks

Originality.ai Pricing

There's no free plan, but you can try their detection features with 50 credits by installing the free AI detection Chrome extension. (One credit scans 100 words.) There are two premium plans: a $30 pay-as-you-go optionns: a $30 pay-as-you-go option or a $14.95/month subscription.

Smodin: Most Cost-Effective Unlimited Use AI Content Detector

Smodin offers a suite of writing tools, including an AI content detector capable of identifying content generated by ChatGPT, Bard, and other AI generators.

Accuracy: Good Except for Claude; But Less Confident

Smodin performed quite well in the tests. It correctly identified three out of four content sources, failing only on the Claude-generated content. Interestingly, I got different results in two tests conducted a few days apart, suggesting either tool instability or, more likely, that it had been retrained and updated. (You'll see two sets of test results below.)

Human: Content is likely human-written. (24.8% vs. 9.2% chance of being entirely AI-generated.)
ChatGPT: Content is likely AI-written. (81.4% vs. 62.4% chance of being entirely AI-generated.)
Claude: Content is likely a mix of human and AI. (57.4% vs. 12.1% chance of being entirely AI-generated.)
Mixed: Content is likely a mix of human and AI. (60.8% vs. 31.7% chance of being entirely AI-generated.)

How to Use

Like other applications, Smodin is straightforward to use: simply paste your text into the input box or upload a file. The free plan allows up to 5,000 characters, while the Ultimate plan extends this to 50,000 characters, with further expansion possible through custom enterprise plans. Results on the screen highlight AI-generated paragraphs and sentences.

Additional Features

Plagiarism checker
Summary generator, rewriting tools, and writing tools (generative AI)

Smodin Pricing

A limited free plan includes 5 free uses per week. Paid plans for unlimited use start at $12/month (billed annually).

The Claude Detection Conundrum

A common thread in my test results was that all tools—except TraceGPT—failed to identify Claude-generated text as AI content.

Another tool, Trinka, also identified Claude's text as AI-generated but didn't make the cut due to odd performance elsewhere:

Human: AI-Generated Text (83.95%)
ChatGPT: AI-Generated Text (100.00%)
Claude: AI-Generated Text (74.17%)
Mixed: AI-Generated Text (100.00%)

The fact that most detectors failed on Claude suggests two things: (a) Claude is better at creating human-sounding content (which is generally the consensus among writers), and (b) these tools are likely trained primarily on GPT and pay less attention to Claude.

Should You Use (and Trust) AI Content Detectors?

The AI content landscape is in constant flux. While AI detection tools are improving, they still have limitations. Just look at these test results. In some cases, they struggle to distinguish between highly sophisticated AI-generated text and human-written content. As AI content generation tools develop ways to sound more human, content detection models need training on more examples. It's an endless game of cat and mouse.

In short, AI content detectors, like AI content generators, are imperfect. Use them cautiously and maintain a healthy dose of skepticism.

To conclude, I'd like to add: despite their imperfections, AI content detectors remain valuable tools. They help us better understand and manage the use of AI-generated content. As technology advances, these tools will undoubtedly become more accurate and reliable. The key is to understand that they are aids, not final arbiters. We still need human judgment and critical thinking to evaluate content quality and authenticity.

For educators, content managers, and others who need to verify content sources, these tools can serve as an excellent starting point. However, they shouldn't be the sole basis for judgment. Combining multiple tools with human review is likely to yield the most reliable results.

As AI technology continues to evolve, we may see more advanced detection methods emerge, such as semantic understanding-based detection or tools capable of identifying specific AI model "fingerprints." Whatever the future holds, staying vigilant and adaptable will be crucial.

In this era of increasingly prevalent AI content, cultivating critical thinking and information literacy skills is more important than ever. Whether we're content creators or consumers, we all need to learn how to discern the authenticity and value of information, rather than relying solely on tools to make that judgment for us.

For more AI content detection tools, visit our AI navigation website category page: AI Content Detection Tools Category