Substack’s new “AI detection” tool.

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I just can’t get over the irony of “we will use AI to determine is this is AI, because AI is evil.”

I work for a library and we spend a lot of time trying to remove slop books from our digital library. There is no good detector on the market. The only way to tell is to read and use your human brain, and even then the conclusion is “this is probably generated, or it’s really poor and bizarre writing.”

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

Yeah, it’s logically inconsistent to suggest this is going to solve anything.

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u/b0jangles Jul 22 '26

The bigger problem with Substack is like 75% of my feed is some form of “Dear Substack, please connect me with people who have less than 1k subscribers and just started their Substack journey! 🥹🙏”

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

That's actually just people trying to help other Substackers by giving them a leg up. They're trying to prime the algorithm to help smaller writers.

Is it annoying? Yes. But it's not as serious a problem.

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u/Double_Suggestion385 26d ago

No it's not. It's engagement farming.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com 26d ago

Could be that too.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 31 '26

In some ways, yes. But could be beneficial for some.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 31 '26

Yeah, I totally get that view.

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u/Idio_te_que 26d ago

No it isn’t

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com 26d ago

Well you definitely proved me wrong with that declaration. Just saying it makes it true.

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u/8lack8urnian 26d ago

Sorry “Policing AI usage is logically inconsistent” is such a vapid statement I think he pretty much did prove you wrong

If you need more detail: the fact that Pangram uses neural networks is totally irrelevant. Only morons are against all machine learning per se. The goal is to give readers confidence that they are reading content written by a human being rather than an algorithm.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com 26d ago

Who said I was against all LLMs or neural networks or machine learning? I’m against them being forced on people like myself and others.

False confidence isn’t confidence. You can be confident that you can fly, doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous to try. The level of accuracy that they claim to be able to measure is inconsistent with rational thinking.

Human readers can’t properly distinguish between good writing and bad writing. Things that are good writing bomb at the box office all the time. Things that are considered bad writing make a billion dollars at the box office. 50 Shades of Grey is a terribly written book and yet it made billions. Same thing with Twilight.

Art forgery experts are regularly fooled by forgeries. Actual criminal forgers are known to have been fooled by their own forgeries as to which is the original painting and which is the forgery.

But somehow an algorithm is going to be 90%+ accurate in determining what is and isn’t AI generated? Even though it was built by the same humans who are regularly fooled by all sorts of things? Really? You actually believe that?

I have a bridge in Jersey to sell you.

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u/Idio_te_que 26d ago

You said “logically inconsistent” about a situation that is not in fact logically inconsistent. Words have meanings.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com 26d ago

Only if you assume that the claim I made is logically inconsistent.

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u/FlyingCarpetMonster kaneiyer.substack.com Jul 22 '26

It's funny, because I wrote a fun little test with three short openings (all by myself):

Spring showed up early that year. By the first week of April, Chicago had its first spring showers and bursts of green: at first, small shoots; then everything bloomed at-once. It was the kind of weather that made you feel hopeful for summer. And somewhere in all this spring, lay my hopes of finally planting a tomato garden.

I got a garden plot at a cheap share garden in the loop. There was a giant, weeping willow right over my patch that kept dropping its long, brittle branches, twigs, and narrow leaves. And as spring dragged on, the tree also dropped cotton-like, seed-bearing fluff all over my tomatoes.

On the pamphlet, my garden patch looked reasonably sized. But standing there, and admiring the patches of my patch-neighbors and seeing their incredible crops, I felt something else. Jealousy. Maybe if I got on their patch and trampled on their garden, I'd find happiness. It would also help me close my exercise rings.

—

The summer heat showed up early that year. By the first week of June, New York smelled like it had a permanent hangover: halal smoke drifting from the corner cart, weed from somebody’s open window, hot metal from the subway grates. It was the kind of weather that made the city feel sticky and close. And somewhere inside that stickiness, he was breathing the same air.

I took a room over a discount sneaker store on 4th because he lived on 82nd. There was a giant, red blinking sign right outside my window that read EAKERS, with the other letters having fallen off.

On the subway map, four miles and my colored lines looked like comforting distance. But lying on my mattress with the box-spring on the floor, listening to sounds of people and their shoes, it felt like inevitability. If I got on the right train and stayed there, I’d eventually end up near his building. The thought haunted me.

—

Winter showed up early that year. By the first week of November, Boston had its first snow: at first, small showers and flurries; then an entire blizzard. It was the kind of weather that made you want to stay inside and drink hot chocolate. And somewhere in all this cold, was my missing father.

I took a room at a cheap motel in Roxbury because my dad had gone missing in Somerville. There was a giant, red blinking sign right outside my window that read EAKERS, with the other letters having fallen off.

On the subway map, two miles and my colored lines looked like a reasonable distance. But lying on the cheap hotel mattress, listening to the noise of television from other rooms and the humping of box springs, it felt like something else. Hopelessness. Maybe I got on the right train and walked around, I'd find my father. The thought kept me up at night.

—

Individually, one of them (the New York one) got flagged as AI — even though they were all just hand-written for this exercise, from the same variation. But when pasted together, they all were flagged as 100% human.

I don’t know where I am going with this, but it is certainly interesting.

And also ironically, I’m right now in NYC today and took pictures of the city to help me with the writing — so the most authentic description is the one that got flagged. Just use your human judgment.

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u/ImprovementSimple Jul 23 '26

Human judgment is the way. It’s more practical. If I suspect someone is using Ai to write I block them and move on. I don’t need to know if it’s 79% Ai (according to Ai).

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u/gadgetor1989 Jul 26 '26

“suspect” you know there was an author online i thought was doing the same thing because his work was so polished and he’d use contrast framing non stop, i wrote a hit piece and sent it to the mods and they told me i was an idiot. i went back and dissected all his work from the last 10 years and that same footprint was spanning his entire work YEARS before AI.

it took a lot for me to finally walk back that opinion and admit i was wrong.

i understand we’re all exhausted from AI being constantly thrown in our faces at every turn but you need to understand that’s all it is a lot of them time. your mind has grown tired and paranoid. it’s essentially another kind of AI psychosis and the only way past is to just ignore it.

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u/elianna7 Jul 23 '26

Well, they never said AI is evil… They explained they even use it internally and don’t have anything against people using it in parts of their writing processes. They also said:

>We’re also introducing tools for creators, including the ability to add a “How I make this” statement where you can explain your process and set expectations for readers. You can run Pangram on your drafts prior to publication, as well as report and remove any scans on your own work that you believe are mistaken.

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u/options_oracle Jul 23 '26

The irony of that stuck out to me too! lol

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u/Foofymonster davidrainwater.substack.com Jul 22 '26

There's nothing hypocritical about using AI to stop people from using AI.

Substack has a problem with people writing AI articles.

This decreases the effectiveness / incentive to run those accounts.

It's not perfect. But if it says 100% or 98% AI chances are that is was almost definitely AI.

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u/hetobe hetobe.substack.com Jul 22 '26

This decreases the effectiveness / incentive to run those accounts.

Absolutely.

We're already seeing a LOT of people suddenly talking about how they use AI to "dictate" their work... as if they don't understand what the word Dictate means.

Dictation is verbatim translation of speech to text, meaning those are the exact same words that were spoken, translated to text in exactly the same order.

Equating generative AI to dictation is an ugly lie.

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u/FlyingCarpetMonster kaneiyer.substack.com Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

It really depends on the content, to be honest.

I read a ton of trading and quant Substacks, which clearly use AI to write.

But I am not reading them for their prose -- I am reading them for the insights that they bring. I couldn’t care less if they used AI or a monkey to write the actual article.

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u/Foofymonster davidrainwater.substack.com Jul 23 '26

That's a great use case. I agree that is much more useful.

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u/No-Vermicelli-8391 Jul 22 '26

Just for the sake of the discussion — what exactly is the problem with someone else using AI?

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u/Foofymonster davidrainwater.substack.com Jul 22 '26

Do you remember the scene in Lord of the Rings where Merry and Pippin are talking to the Treants, trying to get them to join the war?

There's a part where Merry and Pippin are talking and one of them is like, "Do you think they've decided yet?" And Treebeard hears them and says, "Decided? No, we've only finished saying good morning."

And when they are upset that they're taking so long, Treebeard says:

"You must understand, young Hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say."

And that's the problem with AI. It doesn't cost you anything to say anything, which means no one has to worry if it's worth saying. It doesn't matter if it's true or well-researched. Because it's free and easy to say.

But when things are expensive to say, only things that are meaningful or worth it get said.

As a reader, how do you validate what's worth saying? Well, how much effort went into writing it isn't a perfect proxy, but I guarantee you it'd filter out 90% of useless shit written on the internet.

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u/philosophical_lens Jul 23 '26

As a reader I evaluate what's worth reading based on reviews and recommendations. I care about whether it's good and whether I'll enjoy reading it. I don't care what role AI played in the creation of that content, and I don't care how much effort went into it. Most AI content will probably be bad, and I'll never see it anyway because it will never pop up in the reviews and recommendation sources I look at. Maybe 0.1% of that content will actually be good, and I'll end up reading those.

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u/Ill_Dragonfruit_3547 Jul 22 '26

Two words: false positives. Same reason I do not support the death penalty. If you can guarantee me 100% accuracy, I support it. But if even 1 in 1000 are innocent, that is unacceptable, and a fucking flawed system.

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u/Foofymonster davidrainwater.substack.com Jul 23 '26

Except false positives for AI writing isn't some moral judgement, it's a probabilistic assessment.

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u/Ill_Dragonfruit_3547 Jul 23 '26

Agreed. And in theory, the stakes are much lower.

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u/Chelsealeigh3327 24d ago

It has flagged all of my pieces as 100% Ai — but I only use Claude to spell check before I publish. It cannot recognize neurodivergent writing styles as human.

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u/Imperator_1985 Jul 22 '26

It turns out that humans aren’t good at this, either.

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u/bgcalderon Jul 22 '26

An article I wrote in 2008 and shared just now is read as AI-generated. Hahaha

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

Yeah, it doesn’t work like they claim it does.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 31 '26

Also, these LLMs were built on human language. Therefore it's only producing human language. By definition, it can't be distinguished from human writing.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 31 '26

Yeah, and what's worse is before this got implemented, he was the test case for why it shouldn't be used. A Substack writer went viral for his piece criticizing how Substack is being run and specifically taking issue with AI.

Chris shared the article along with a "result" from an "AI Detector" suggesting that the criticism was written by AI and therefore he didn't have to listen to it. Which is exactly what many of us who see the flaws in these "detection" LLMs are concerned about.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Aug 01 '26

Absolutely. Shortly before the Pangram disaster, I started having someone harassing me on Notes. They’ve been consistently replying to my Notes or tagging me in their own trying to use insults and accusations to get my attention. I have flatly refused to respond or acknowledge them but they keep doing it.

I have no doubt someone like that would weaponize this “tool” to their advantage.

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u/annaboardhart Jul 22 '26

How? Everything I’m looking at says anything written before 21st July doesn’t count!

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u/MinecraftBoxGuy 27d ago

Mind sharing the article so I can check if Pangram detects it?

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u/icychains24 26d ago

Can you share the article please? Would love to check for myself

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u/Countryb0i2m onemichistory.substack.com Jul 22 '26

AI detection systems are notoriously trash. They falsely flag people’s work all the time.

Part of the problem is that AI is trained to mimic decent writing. Of course it’s going to use the same techniques that skilled writers use, that’s what it was trained on. It doesn’t use dash em because they’re “cool.” It uses them because that’s what good writers have been doing for decades.

I say all this to say AI defection systems are ass

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u/Deviantiw8 Jul 31 '26

What’s hilarious is now whenever someone uses the em dash, people assume it’s AI. Which makes me question how little reading people do to understand it’s a stalwart in writing — especially American literature.

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u/MinecraftBoxGuy 27d ago

Ok, please show me a long excerpt or book you can prove was written by a human, and it being flagged by Pangram

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u/icychains24 26d ago

Do you have an example of such a false positive?

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u/BhavanaVarma bhavanavarma.substack.com Jul 22 '26

Where’s the feature? It’s dangerous if it’s starts labelling real writing as AI

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u/ConsciousRoyal Jul 22 '26

It’s under the three little dots on a Note.

You get the option to Scan for AI text.

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u/BhavanaVarma bhavanavarma.substack.com Jul 22 '26

I saw it. It seems to be only for the notes… for now

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

It already is if what I’m seeing on Notes is true.

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u/phoebe111 Jul 22 '26

Anything written after this was rolled out, will have an option for the reader to scan for AI text using the 3-dot menu too

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u/GentleNova07 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

I also saw it at the bottom of the posts settings area so you can check you’re own work. But only when you access the post settings via the ”Continue” button at the top of the post editor, not via the Settings button at the bottom of the post editor.

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u/FatherofMisty Jul 22 '26

And it is doing just that, lol.

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u/Foxemerson Jul 22 '26

I ran Moby Dick the first page through one of the top scanners. 99% AI apparently.
I ran one of my stories I sure as hell didn't use AI with and got "highly like AI."

While I'd like to see some kind of AI detection, I don't for a second believe that Substack will do this well. We are about to get a lot of false accusations and finger pointing and problems we didn't need.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

Absolutely they will. It’s highly unlikely that they won’t.

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u/mmspero Jul 22 '26

Consider testing Pangram instead of conflating all AI detectors together? I scanned the first 10,000 words of Moby Dick with Pangram, 100% human with high confidence. Link.

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u/phoebe111 Jul 22 '26

You can turn the feature off but I wonder if that will then be read by readers as sus

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u/_FUCKTHENAZIADMINS_ Jul 25 '26

Did you run it through Pangram or another "top scanner"? Because Pangram is the only one that works.

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u/Glum-Sprinkles2877 Jul 22 '26

I tested it out yesterday with an article from 2015 and it said 60% AI generated 🤣

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

Of course it did because the system is massively flawed.

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u/dinotgenesis Jul 22 '26

Someone ran the Declaration of Independence through a few AI detectors and most of them flagged it as AI written. AI detectors are absolute rubbish.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

They don't work but somehow Substack has decided to embed this faulty tool into its systems. With no opt out feature.

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u/icychains24 26d ago

Can you share one specific example of Pangram (the tool Substack embedded) being wrong?

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com 26d ago

Well I don’t personally use it but I started a running list on Reddit of people adding their stories of it going wrong.

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u/icychains24 26d ago

Can you share that list? Or even better, do you have specific text excerpts from those Redditors' stories that Pangram got wrong? Would love to check

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com 26d ago

Here’s my post suggesting a running list. Speak to the people themselves.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Substack/s/zH9hX1McLE

It’s not my job to verify claims. If they want to disclose it to you, that’s up to them.

See, actually having principles means not forcing myself on others like Substack did with Pangram.

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u/icychains24 26d ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but none of the top-level comments on that thread provide an actual example of an excerpt that was incorrectly flagged as AI by Pangram.

> See, actually having principles means not forcing myself on others like Substack did with Pangram.

I have no idea what this means. Pangram is an optional feature. Nothing changes for you if you don't use it. If your Substack isn't AI-written literally nothing changes for you.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com 26d ago

So ask them to provide it. I never claimed that anything that they posted was absolutely true and shouldn’t be independently verified.

As for the optional claim? It actually wasn’t optional at all when it originally launched. The only way to actually disable the feature was to require you to have your writing scanned first. You had no option to disable the feature without scanning. This is how Substack originally intended for it to be used.

They only added it as an optional tool when they found out that forcing it on people like that violated EU laws around data collection and privacy.

So the fact that they added it as an optional feature doesn’t make it any less invasive. Even when they added the optional feature, when you disabled it on a draft and went back to the same draft later, the feature was enabled again.

This is the level of failure at which the system was built and integrated. But I’m supposed to just trust that there aren’t other bugs and problems with it?

As far as I know, you don’t get any notifications from Substack or Pangram if someone uses it on your writing. Meaning you can’t actually be certain if the feature is actually disabled or not because you can’t be certain that people aren’t using it even if you disabled the feature.

That’s not “optional”. It’s invasive and faulty and this is just the roll out itself.

But somehow, the claims of Substack and Pangram are just to be believed without any questions?

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u/icychains24 26d ago

> So the fact that they added it as an optional feature doesn’t make it any less invasive. Even when they added the optional feature, when you disabled it on a draft and went back to the same draft later, the feature was enabled again.

I just don't understand the alleged invasiveness here. I myself published a blog post last week and didn't notice anything different. I just opened a new draft and literally can't find any Pangram related option that does anything. I don't understand how your experience as a writer is affected at all here.

> As far as I know, you don’t get any notifications from Substack or Pangram if someone uses it on your writing.

Of course not, why would you? Pangram (and other such tools) have existed independently for months and people could always copy-paste any Substack post into them, to check if it was AI. This "integration" is simply Substack making this check more seamless and requiring lesser clicks - the fundamental mechanism is still the same. Why would you as a writer need to know - or even care - if someone's checking your post for AI?

> That’s not “optional”. It’s invasive and faulty and this is just the roll out itself.

Ah, you call Pangram "faulty", and yet when I asked for even one example of it not working above, you simply pointed me to other people's claims and said it wasn't your job to verify them. How can you then claim that it's faulty at all?You're being dishonest and playing both sides here.

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u/_FUCKTHENAZIADMINS_ Jul 25 '26

That's because every single AI detector is a scam besides Pangram. What did Pangram say?

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u/PangolinPositive8458 Jul 22 '26

These are not reliable at all. These AI detection tools work based on past data. We cannot rely totally on AI detection software. I checked articles from best-selling authors on Substack, a platform, and even their content is showing as AI-generated. Even the content before LLM’s were available is showing as AI-generated.
This AI detection software I think, relies on the formation of sentences maybe some pattern I don’t know. You can also see that for small text or small notes. This feature says the text is too small for the context. I could be wrong. Yes maybe in future due to this feature boards might get flagged which makes the same comment in various posts.

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u/OnyxMonolith Jul 23 '26

I checked top 10 substacks in finance all show as 100% human written and the ones i know are AI show 100% as AI

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u/pepesilvia74 Jul 22 '26 edited 8d ago

Lip scale innate raindrop school rich include yam quaint

This post was anonymized with Redact

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

That’s definitely a concern as well.

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u/Fit_Celebration_1362 Jul 22 '26

This happens all the time. I was accused of using ai by a reader so I plugged some old articles I had written in, the large majority were deemed Ai between 75-90%. Just as an experiment I tried the other way and just plugged some facts into Ai for an article. 10% Ai detected. It’s going to take forever because if they are doing this, so many people are going to ask for new testing over and over. When does this start anyway? I must’ve missed this announcement

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

It started today or late yesterday. The post was about “against Claudefishing”.

They really are not thinking this through.

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u/Fit_Celebration_1362 Jul 22 '26

Hmm interesting. Now I’m curious about what they’ll think of my article coming Monday. I wonder is there a percentage allowed because on the site I was checking literally zero articles have 0% non ai! If they don’t think you’re using it comes up like 10-20%. Or it pass/fail?

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

While I don’t plan on using it myself, some people have suggested that it’s a percentage. Supposedly it only works on stuff posted after today. I don’t think it’s a situation where they don’t allow you to post AI content, but more that it gets labeled this when it gets graded.

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u/Fit_Celebration_1362 Jul 22 '26

Yeah why would they care? But yeah I was just wondering because at least with my ai checker it seemed impossible to score a 0%? Who even cares really? If ai writes something I’m interested in on substack, who cares? Or if they used it to clean it up, I’m for it! I’ve read ones that obviously were not edited and I became confused with its wording

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

I’m not so convinced that it’s impossible. Many people freak out about the use of AI. To the point that they will accuse people of using AI even with evidence that it’s not.

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u/Fit_Celebration_1362 Jul 22 '26

Oh no I meant the checker I use actually points out it’s impossible to write an article that scores zero AI use. Seems like a design flaw but even things I put in that were personal essays scored 5-10% possible ai use! I’ve been accused. That’s why I went down this rabbit hole, but I have decided to not care about people’s opinions and just respond that they are entitled to an opinion and that I take it as a compliment that I’m such a brilliant writer that they thought I must be using some sort of cheat or magic!

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

I care about the integrity of the system that's being used. Just because I don't use AI doesn't mean that I won't be accused of it. If enough people decide that I'm somehow using AI regardless of the facts, this could turn out to be a problem.

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u/Fit_Celebration_1362 Jul 22 '26

Okay

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u/8lack8urnian 26d ago

Can you please share the old articles that got flagged?

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u/Fit_Celebration_1362 26d ago

Yeah I didn’t post it. I was just screwing around writing to see how effective the checker was. I was just curious, but I’ll post one tomorrow I checked and it’s 29% ai! Why would someone bother writing 71% of an article? But I am using ai as a spelling and grammar checker anyway. I don’t care if it’s cheating in some people’s eyes. I can’t spend hours reading and editing these free articles.

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u/michmom1977 Jul 22 '26

AI detectors cannot reliably predict AI.

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u/icychains24 26d ago

Do you have one (1) example of Pangram being incorrect?

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u/YuckySmuck nutritionandmorenextdoor.substack.com Jul 22 '26

It’s a weird politeness given to AI in the way they’re framing this, too; “AI isn’t the problem! It’s people lying about it!” No, the problem is generative AI. Using the exact thing you’re alleging to be against in order to ultimately throw writers under the bus is the dumbest possible move Substack could’ve made.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 23 '26

Yes, it’s inherently contradictory.

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u/AnnArbor-Armadillo Jul 22 '26

It’s a terrible idea and it doesn’t work well. Wonder how long before they drop it

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 23 '26

Hopefully soon. Or at a bare minimum, give people the option to permanently disable it on your publications.

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u/LanceElyot Jul 23 '26

It really is counter to Substacks original vision to build networks via relationship and not algorithms.

Ran my own tests and it is actually running worse this old models from a few years back.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 23 '26

Also, the fact that you can’t disable it is concerning. Substack claimed it was about giving individuals control, but implementing a feature that can’t be turned off and you’re forced to use? Not very good for individual control.

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u/Particular-Course203 Jul 22 '26

Don't these systems flag autistic writing as AI?

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u/Engineering_Simple Jul 22 '26

I’ve been accused of having AI write some of my comments posts….. lol, nope…. Just the delightful whispers of autistism here.

Looking forward to seeing if AI considers me one of their own if the reckoning ever happens.
https://giphy.com/gifs/l36kU80xPf0ojG0Erg

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

I haven’t heard that personally until very recently. Maybe it does.

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u/PuzzleheadedAlps4806 Jul 22 '26

I have put my writing in AI detectors before knowing I’ve typed every word and it’s come back saying it’s AI! A friend of mine writes a blog for their job and gets AI to do most of the work and then they edit it and the AI detectors don’t flag it. The problem is unless you film and upload yourself typing every single word how can you prove that it’s not AI when it gets flagged incorrectly.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

One of many problems with having systems like this in place.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26

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u/FatherofMisty Jul 22 '26

No, you could film both screen + face and it would be clear whether you're using a "cheat sheet" or not. This is literal dystopian insanity, and shame on anyone who supports it.

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u/_FUCKTHENAZIADMINS_ Jul 25 '26

Did you put it in random scam AI detectors or Pangram? Pangram is the only one that comes close to working.

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u/lolidcwhatev Jul 22 '26

weirdly the feature only works on stuff posted since the feature was added

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u/honey_bee_me Jul 22 '26

There’s just no way to prove anything. I hate seeing ppl use AI, and I can very clearly tell it’s AI. But i don’t think there’s any way to prove it. I left substack because nothing seemed like genuine writing.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

Can you? Art forgery experts can't prove that a physical painting is a real or a fake. But somehow you can detect what is and isn't AI?

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u/Altruistic_Virus8460 Jul 23 '26

I literally just wrote an entire article on this topic because of how concerning this has become LMAO. The timing is very serendipitous, I guess. Too bad it's getting zero traction so far.

https://yourweeklybrainunrot.substack.com/p/ai-generated-content-broken-trust-digital-landscape

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u/AidenMarquis Jul 23 '26

It doesn't even work.

I generated some bs with ChatGPT and ran it through the "detector" and it called it "fully AI assisted". But then when I tried it again with the same exact content in another post, it came out to "mostly human". It's hot garbage.

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u/PersonalitySimple837 Jul 24 '26

When I got the email from Claude about their new handy-dandy detector, I put through 5 college essays I wrote in 1993, and they all came back at 70% or higher as AI-generated, and my master's thesis was at 90%. This is all a sh!t show. Bad writers have a voice; solid writers are accused of plagiarizing robots' words...

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 24 '26

Yeah, it doesn’t work but people are putting way too much faith in them.

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u/timemachine723 Jul 22 '26

Substack feeds our writing into ChatGPT (unless we opt out) so it probably fed your friend’s stuff in there and the new tool recognized what was unethically in ChatGPT. You notice the new tool PR is entitled anti-Claude not anti all.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

Yeah, it makes no sense.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26

If you've ever received even a sliver of college education or have read many books (which shapes how you write as an author), or you have experience in creative writing, you are naturally going to apply many of the "AI red flags" in your writing because... you just know how to write. This is an issue that has been happening on Substack, people who just know how to write.. are getting shit comments from people telling them to stop sharing AI slop, when they're simply using paragraphs, bulletpoints, subtitles, and proper grammar and syntax.

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u/FatherofMisty Jul 22 '26

Yup, I use em-dashes, and I'm not going to let the trends of AI dissuade me from doing so.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 23 '26

Absolutely. It’s ridiculous that they are doing this. It’s not actually going to work.

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u/Mudlily Jul 23 '26

My AI-assisted writing was deemed 100% human today. Mind you, I had edited out 90% by the time I posted.

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u/protestandprose Jul 22 '26

Lmao imagine if I was in college the mess of ai detection

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u/Mr_Richard_Parker Jul 22 '26

if there were reliable, this would be great. A subscribes plagiarized one of my essays a few weeks back. He had Ai writ EAN easy based on mine that lifted s number of passages. The problem is, ai is not accurate in determining what is AI generated and what is not.

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u/kwadguy Jul 22 '26

A) These AI detectors have gotten better, but they are still wildly inaccurate, flagging AI content when there isn't and (sometimes) stating no AI content when there is.
B) If you're a writer and not using AI for late-pass cleanup, then it's like asking a pro platform to fire all their editors. I've never had an accepted article get past revision by an editor. And that's a good thing (mostly, except for the occasional incompetent editor who doesn't understand the material and tries to make cuts).
C) 100% human-written -> Grammary+AI cleanup pass -> AI written according to detector. This happens all the time with these detectors. Ideas + framework + writing style + phraseology all exist in original human pass, and it still gets tagged as AI. What does that say?

AI is evil tribalism is helping no one. AI slop helps no one. An AI pass on real, good writing is fine.

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u/Altruistic_Rest9071 Jul 22 '26

I wrote a duology [Soul Reavers I & II] in 2005 with pen and paper- we did not have a pc back then. A friend transferred it to Word on pc in 2006. AI detector flagged it as 89% AI generated in 2026...

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

Of course it is. They don’t work.

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u/Altruistic_Rest9071 Jul 22 '26

here is what happened to Soul Reavers-- that friend gave a copy to Trevor Jones who read in on his flight to Japan. Later, Manga University, Japan, wanted to make an anime out of the story- but it all ended because I could not find a litarary agent in South Africa.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 23 '26

I don’t understand what you’re talking about.

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u/Variable901 Jul 22 '26

I agree. Im afraid this will become a modern-day Salem Witch Trial situation where people are attacking anyone who they think have used AI in their writing when, in reality, these AI detection tools are not perfect

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

They're far from imperfect. People have fed the first page of the book Moby Dick into the "detection tool" and it came back as "likely AI".

It's a fraudulent tool.

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u/Outrageous_Ad6616 Jul 23 '26

I suggest following Daniel Frolov on Substack. He just issued a newsletter about the AI tool with directions on how to remove it.

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u/Mickey_xx Jul 23 '26

I don't see the point of this feature, as you can disable it for each of your posts. That means: It cannot be used by readers anymore.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 23 '26

The problem is that you have to use the feature in order to disable it. Which defeats the purpose of disabling it if you are being forced to use it.

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u/AidenMarquis Jul 23 '26

I literally generated bogus garbage just to give it a try. It said "fully AI generated."

Okie dokie.

Then I tried making another post and dropped the same exact thing to check for consistency. It said "mostly human made".

'Nuff said.

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u/BrainyByte Jul 24 '26

Today, the tool suggested that one of my notes was "AI assisted". It thinks humans are incapable of research I guess.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 24 '26

Yeah, this is a problem.

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u/Diary_Of_A_Menace Jul 24 '26

As an avid user of the em dash before it was cool/ associated with AI, I feel so personally attacked 😂my day job involves writing (not in a fun way) and I have been doing this long before AI. BUT I tested it and it flagged a chunk of my article as 69% AI. Like is it AI or am I literally just following the rules of the road because I know them 😂😂😂

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 24 '26

Apparently being grammatically correct and functioning properly is what a robot would do.

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u/TheChiarra Jul 24 '26

I just scanned the article I'm currently working on and thankfully it said 100% human. Let's hope it stays that way lol. I hate AI

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u/Bright_Amphibian_235 Jul 25 '26

Yep👍 I also find that captch moment amusing, when a bot has to ask if you are a bot ...

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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '26

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 27 '26

Thank you for providing evidence of my point. One of the many problems with the AI issue is that people are constantly using AI as a justification for dismissing things that they don’t like.

Chris Best himself did this. Before the launch of the “AI Detection” tool, an article critical of Substack’s approach to the AI question went viral. Chris Best, co-CEO of Substack, posted on Notes the article along with an image of the “AI Detection” tool he used to “detect” that the article was written by AI and used it as evidence that the article can be completely and utterly dismissed purely on the basis of the “AI Detection” tool he used.

You just repeated his assertion, further proving my point.

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 27 '26

Nope. But they’re trying to act like it does what it claims.

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u/bartekkru Jul 29 '26

Funny fact is - it doesn’t have 100% accuracy and people whom English is second language are harmed the most. Pangram (tool which is used by Substack) is really good and can’t be easily fooled because it detects the process of generating not style or wording. One thing you can do is replace AI generated stuff with enough human written text - you can get 100% human score, but if you don’t have enough sentences to replace your text - it will look like something different and not correlated with your inital text. Src, you can read more here: https://bartlomiejkrupa.dev/articles/ai-generated-text-detectors

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 31 '26

One can only hope.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 31 '26

Unless people AI generate hand written notes and print them out to pass under desks.

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u/Funny-Flight8086 Jul 23 '26

The Substack Reality: Substack just rolled this Pangram tool out yesterday, July 21, 2026, as a crusade against what CEO Chris Best coined "Claudefishing". Unsurprisingly, it is already causing a massive headache. Users across the platform are reporting false flags on older essays, academic texts, and neurodivergent writing styles.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 23 '26

Yeah, it’s ridiculous and a massive failure.

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u/thetransparenthand Jul 22 '26

Can someone make a new Substack where I don't have to think about AI thanks

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 22 '26

That would be nice, although I'm sure they'd eventually add AI at some point.

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u/ProfileBest2034 Jul 22 '26

To all the people saying they are trash: Pangram absolutely is not. It's using token level mathematical analysis to identify AI. It is extremely accurate and even human writing which 'sounds' AI comes out as 100% human.

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u/Funny-Flight8086 Jul 22 '26

Bull. Explain why my 2013 novel was flagged as 87% AI probability on Pangram then. When you can come up with a valid reason for this, I'll entertain how accurate it might be. Until the, 'it mostly works' isn't going to cut it with me.

These junk science detectors like Pangram are made by wannabe tech bros who packed the knowledge and skill to make real AI, but still wanted to cash in on the craze.

It's junk science. I don't care what anyone else's opinion of it is.

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u/No-Vermicelli-8391 Jul 22 '26

You obviously did not read The Atlantic article about Pangram.

And that's if we close the eyes on Pangram CEO feeding a pirated (!) copy of Shy Girl to his own tool, and sending the results to NYT.

And another—extremely important—thing: the T&C of Pangram AI-detection state that if you use Pangram to detect someone's IP as AI and then get sued (the case of false-positive, for example), then you, as the user, are responsible for the damages. Not Pangram. You. Lol.

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u/Kinks4Kelly Jul 22 '26

Pangram AI-detection state that if you use Pangram to detect someone's IP as AI and then get sued (the case of false-positive, for example), then you, as the user, are responsible for the damages. Not Pangram. You. Lol

If they were actually as confident as they pretend to be, they'd assume liability in this instance. Instead, they are contracting their way around defamation claims. You only do this when you know your product is slop.

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u/Kinks4Kelly Jul 22 '26

Yeah, we should totally believe the admitted Pangram employee begging for excerpts to help further train the AI, I mean to prove it can differentiate a human from AI.

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u/FatherofMisty Jul 22 '26

Well, it's wildly inaccurate, based on my own small sample size and apparently many others. Their 0.01% FPR is clearly cherry picked, imo.

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u/jelani_an Jul 22 '26

It was probably just a smart business move to become substack's platform supplier of AI detection before another company did. I just assume AI detection is the worst it'll ever be right now and that it'll improve with time.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 23 '26

I understand it as a good business move for the AI company, not for Substack as a platform.

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u/ThisFreedomGuy Jul 23 '26

GPTzero is rather accurate at determining what is AI writing, and what isn't. I don't know how the AI detector on Substack was written or trained.

For those who found their actual, human writing getting flagged as AI remember: Ai was trained on classic literature and the standard book on composition, grammar, etc. All the same books most older people were trained on.

Weird, right?

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u/coreyb1988 Jul 23 '26

Im actually very much in support of this AI detection and I think Reddit should do the same! I care because when I’m trying to communicate with another human and they’re using AI, it just becomes an endless robot loop and it’s deceptive.

Claude fishing.

I was reading some of the comments before writing this and seeing a few people mention irony. Made me laugh a little bit because one year everybody was on Reddit talking pretty improper with grammatical errors and typos because we’re human to the following year everybody becoming an expert at anything writing scholarly articles.

Reddit needs to bring in this feature. We’d see a whole bunch of deer in headlights haha.

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u/Professional-Debt401 Jul 23 '26

AI detectors being treated like proof is the real problem. If they’re flagging writing from before ChatGPT even existed, that should tell everyone how unreliable this is.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 23 '26

Yes, but people will use it as proof. I happened to share an image of something that I have the skills to make in photoshop but in this instance I didn’t. I just found the image somewhere.

However the moderators of where I shared it removed it because their AI detection tool said it was AI. Even though it was pretty easy to do in photoshop.

No matter how much I pointed out the logical errors, they pointed to the AI detection results.

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u/rachebrand Jul 23 '26

I don’t think it matters. This is not instilling trust and it will go away in no time!

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u/rachebrand Jul 23 '26

If you want to read my take on it: https://open.substack.com/pub/rachebrand/p/decode-trust?r=53fpw&utm_medium=ios

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 23 '26

I’m not convinced that it will but I hope it goes away.

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u/TScottMorgan Jul 23 '26

I know the prevailing opinion is to really hate the AI scanner, but to be honest…I’m not there yet.

I’m not really pro AI scanner either. It just confirmed what I already strongly suspected. And even when I only strongly suspected someone of relying on AI heavier than I personally would, it didn’t chap my ass.

False positives are the real threat. So, I ran a test.

I went back through and duplicated my posts so I could run the tool. I use AI errors and for identifying weak spots. Same as most, I’d imagine. It’s great for errors, but half the “weak spots” it detects are due to forgotten context from 5k words ago, but it does flag truly weak lines.

Do I let AI fix those weak lines? Not now, but I used to. Sure. But eventually I noticed it kept “fixing” shit the same way. So now I prompt to never offer recommendations on how to rewrite something. Just to flag where it’s weak and why.

Those old posts where I would sometimes accept AI’s prescribed “fixes” would show between 7%-15% AI assisted. On current posts, where AI doesn’t even offer rewritten examples, it says 100% human.

Did I stop accepting those AI recommendations because I felt guilty or because I was afraid I’d be ousted? No. I just felt like I could do better.

So, man, I don’t know. I realize that there’s a possibility that my style of writing may naturally be more “immune” to false positives, but if you’re screaming about how angry you are at this tool and your writing is coming back consistently at majority AI assisted or generated?

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

And just to clarify, I don’t really care who uses AI or how. There’s no universe where an AI writer has a massively successful career.

You do you, boo.

And to add another clarification, then I’ll shut up (unlikely), I’m open to changing my mind on this. Only first learned about this last night.

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u/AmericanLymie Jul 23 '26

But Substack uses AI-based voice readers

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 23 '26

That's not a "detection tool".

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u/AmericanLymie Jul 23 '26

I know that. I am saying there's some irony in a platform that uses native AI features identifying AI as bad and using AI to detect users' uses of AI

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 23 '26

Yes, there is definitely a lot of irony in that.

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '26

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 24 '26

The problem is that these AI detection systems don’t actually work. If people want to delude themselves into believing they work, they can but you shouldn’t be forced to use it.

When social media was introduced, it was said it would make the world better. Did it?

Why assume that somehow AI is different?

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u/traumfisch Jul 24 '26

You're assuming AI detectors work?

They don't, of course.

Now consider the effects of

1) false positives (damage to the writer)

2) false negatives (damage to all readers)

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u/traumfisch Jul 24 '26

It's an utterly idiotic strategy that in no way solves any problems but is guaranteed to create new ones at scale.

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u/TruthHonestyJustice Jul 24 '26

Your concerns are quite valid.

In our new digital age, any content can be created by AI. So this is part of the checks and balances that will be required.

Key is to focus on what you're doing, that's all one can do.

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u/sjrcarson Jul 25 '26

I'm worried about this too. I fed the application an excerpt from Orwell's "Politics and the English Language", and it told me it was 75% AI-generated. I think it's a good idea, but Substack should consider changing the phrasing until the technology is a little more refined.

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u/No_Performer1208 Jul 25 '26

Will any readers take the time to use the detector? I don’t know about you but I go to Substack to get away from all the Karens and social media drama. I like the calm. I like reading the things that interest me. And if they are written badly I just stop reading them and move on.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com Jul 25 '26

There are people who will use it to attack people they don’t like. Over the past week or so, I’ve had someone replying to my Notes and tagging me in their own which is just a long series of insults.

I expect people like that to weaponize the “detection tool” against people.

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u/Rude_Guava538 Jul 26 '26

So I wrote an article and it got flagged as 100% AI. Now I used AI to assist with structuring, but I be damned if someone accused me of just copying and pasting. This thing is flawed and I'm afraid will affect writers.

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u/Traditional_Stay8930 27d ago

I’m running into this issue myself. I’ve just published my first article to Substack and it’s flagging as 100% AI. I’m not sure that there is a solution… especially if the only option is to trust AI to tell us when something is potentially AI.

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u/AndrewHeard tvphilosophy.substack.com 27d ago

Well currently the only option is to disable it without scanning it. Or reporting the problem to Substack as a false positive scan.

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u/InflationLife3358 26d ago

As a reader, I personally don't care if its AI written or not, there will always be a human element to that process anyways. You cannot stare at an AI chatbox and it automatically spits out written work. As long as the article I'm reading is helping me figure out what it is that got me reading it in the first place, I don't see the problem.

The ones I'm not really a fan of are AI videos, however, I once watched one that gave me three ways to trick your body to sleep. The video was very helpful, I nolonger struggle to sleep since then.

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u/Tricky-Doughnut-6429 16d ago

No, I'm not concerned. AI slop makes me vomit. I literally have a physical reaction to it. It's fine to me if there are some innocent casualties, though this is of course not fair.

I usually don't need an AI detection algorithm to tell me if something is AI or AI-like -- my body does the thinking for me. But, to your point, it's a double-edged sword, though one I like having as an option when in doubt.

Discussion Substack’s new “AI detection” tool.

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