Grammarly Unveils AI Content Detector Tool Targeted at Education

Grammarly is set to launch a new tool called Grammarly Authorship, designed to detect whether content was created by AI, a human, or a combination of both. Although it will be available to all users, the tool is specifically targeted at the education market, addressing concerns about AI-generated content in academic settings.

The Challenge of AI Content Detection

In an era where AI-generated text is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from human-written content, several detection tools have emerged with mixed results. Grammarly believes its new tool will offer a more accurate solution by identifying which parts of a document were generated by AI and which were created by a person.

How Grammarly Authorship Works

Grammarly Authorship will be compatible with 500,000 apps and websites, including Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and Apple's Pages. Unlike other detection tools that rely on algorithms, Authorship tracks the writing process in real time, enabling it to distinguish between text typed by a human, pasted from another source, or generated by AI.

The tool will launch in beta for Google Docs next month and will expand to Microsoft Word and Apple's Pages by the end of the year. It will be available in all editions of Google Docs, including free and paid versions, and across all instances of Word, both on desktop and web platforms.

Targeting the Education Market

Though Grammarly Authorship will be available to individuals, businesses, and other customers, the education sector is a primary focus. This emphasis stems from issues like false positives, where students' work has been wrongly flagged as AI-generated. Jenny Maxwell, head of Grammarly for Education, highlighted the need for a tool that facilitates productive conversations about the role of AI in education, rather than creating adversarial situations between students and educators. "Authorship does just that by giving students an easy way to show how they wrote their paper, including if and how they interacted with AI tools," Maxwell said.

Features and Functionality

Once activated, Authorship will automatically categorize text as typed by a human, generated or modified by AI, pasted from another source, or edited by Grammarly or other spell checkers. The tool will also provide an analysis of the document, including total writing time and active writing sessions. An Authorship report will display color-coded sections of the text, indicating its origin and offering a replay of the document’s creation process.

For students, Authorship aims to ensure that their work meets the required guidelines and provides objective data if accused of AI-generated plagiarism. By early next year, the tool will also prompt students to cite any text from external sources.

The AI Detection Landscape

Other companies, such as OpenAI, have attempted to create AI content detectors with varying levels of success. In 2023, OpenAI launched and later withdrew its AI detection tool due to low accuracy. While the technology has improved, false positives and other issues remain a challenge. Whether Grammarly Authorship will outperform existing tools remains to be seen, but its launch next month will provide the first insights.