GPTZero App Detects if an Essay Was Written by a Human or by AI

A 22-year-old college student has created an app called GPTZero, which can easily detect whether an essay was written by a human or by OpenAI’s ChatGPT (via The Daily Beast).

Princeton senior Edward Tian spent his winter break in his local coffee shop developing the app. “I was expecting, at most, a few dozen people trying out the app,” Tian told the publication.

“Suddenly, it was crazy in usership with over 2000 people signing up for the beta in a few hours.”

I spent New Years building GPTZero — an app that can quickly and efficiently detect whether an essay is ChatGPT or human written

— Edward Tian (@edward_the6)

January 3, 2023

“I’m awestruck that it blew up and went so viral,” Tian added while revealing that GPTZero saw such a massive influx of users that it even crashed the platform that was hosting it.

Tian, who’s pursuing a double major in computer science and journalism, was bothered by ethical dilemmas posed by chatbots as well as what he described as the “black box” nature of large language models like ChatGPT.

The opaque nature of the models results in people fundamentally misunderstanding and, therefore, misusing them.

“Humans deserve to know when the writing isn’t human,” Tian said.

Tian, however, says he isn’t anti-AI. He believes that there’s a time and a place for them if used ethically and with consent. “I’m not opposed to using AI for writing when it makes sense.”

You can try out the GPTZero app at this link.