Why Did My Writing Score as AI-generated?

by August Isley

As you know, ShelteringTree.Earth, LLC Publishing has drawn a line in the sand about AI-generated writing in any of their books. As such, each sample chapter that is submitted to ST.E undergoes an AI evaluation as part of the three-week review before the entire manuscript is ever requested. 

Amazingly, some people's original works have been identified and labeled as AI-generated (and therefore declined a publishing contract.) How does that happen? Simply put - if you have it online and an AI-training bot snatched it, it now comes up as AI-generated.

Here are five suggestions to prevent your original work from being classified as AI:

1. Exposure to AI Content Pools: When you post your work on public or third-party domains, it can become part of the dataset used to train AI models. AI-generated content might draw from these sources, making your writing resemble the style or patterns of the AI, thus increasing its likelihood of being flagged.

2. Widespread Access and Replication: Once your work is online, it might be copied, shared, or republished without your knowledge or proper attribution. This can lead to your writing appearing in multiple places, triggering plagiarism or AI-generation flags due to its presence across different sources.

3. Lack of Personalization: Third-party domains might strip away personalized elements such as formatting, author bios, or context, making your writing appear more generic. AI detection tools can mistake this lack of distinctive features for AI-generated content.

4. Algorithmic Adjustments: Some websites might modify or optimize content for SEO or readability. These adjustments can alter your original writing, introducing patterns or anomalies that resemble AI-generated text, thereby increasing the likelihood of being flagged.

5. Overlapping Topics and Styles: If your writing covers popular topics or follows common styles and themes, it might resemble other content already present on the domain. (Think, if you are writing your article patterned after the Florida-approved FSA writing rules which you had to pass in fourth and eighth grade in order to go to the next grade, it matches the style of hundreds of thousands of articles already online.) AI tools might mistake the high similarity index as a sign of AI-generation rather than recognizing it as original work.

There are many free AI-evaluations available online.  Before you submit your query to any publisher, run the sample through an AI-evaluation. And understand, if you post something online - it is published, whether you were paid anything or not - it is published, and you need to indicate that on any query.