The most frequently asked question I’ve gotten over the past three months is “How do I pass AI content detectors with my AI outputs?”
I get why. AI content detectors are everywhere, and everyone seems to be using them. It’s especially concerning for bloggers and freelancers who have been leveraging AI to boost their business and are wondering if the software is any threat to their livelihood. As a result, AI enthusiasts have been looking for ways to “fool” the software with AI-detector-fooling prompts.
Hence the question du jour.
But I would argue that this is the wrong question to ask. The correct question is: Do AI content detectors matter?
And my answer to that is no, they don’t. At least, not for savvy bloggers and freelancers. In fact, I don’t care whatsoever about how to pass AI content detectors.
There are three pretty big reasons for this.
1. AI Content Detectors Can Be Wrong
AI content detectors are getting better, but it still makes mistakes. I’ve even had someone tell me quite recently that they put an article into a content detector that they had written themselves and it was flagged as AI content.
People forget that AI may use certain patterns when writing, but those patterns were based on what its learned from reading human content… Sooooo….
If you are someone who uses AI content detection software to review other people’s work, I recommend treading carefully because false positives most certainly exist, and it’s difficult to prove definitively if something was written by AI or not.
2. Passing Now Doesn’t Mean Passing Later
Even if AI content software will probably never be perfect, the technology is getting better all the time. This means that even if your AI content passes detection today, that doesn’t mean that it will pass in a year or two – or even a month from now, for that matter!
For instance, I reviewed an AI content detector eight months ago on my YouTube channel; in it, my Jasper AI outputs passed with flying colors, showing with 100% confidence that it was human-written.
But less than a month after I posted that video, the software was upgraded, and those same passages no longer passed. So even if you can find a way to generate AI outputs that pass detection now, it’s probably only a matter of time before the software catches up.
3. Google Doesn’t Care
The third and most important reason why I don’t care about AI content detectors is because Google doesn’t care. There are a lot of misconceptions about this, especially a year ago when SEJ ran an article in which John Mueller was quoted as saying that AI content was against guidelines. But Mueller was merely following back on old guidelines that were more than a decade old and applied to when AI writers were merely basic content spinners.
Google has since released updated guidelines that are very clear about the fact that AI content, in and of itself, is not against their policies. What they do take issue with is low-quality, spammy content that is published primarily to manipulate search engines.
To quote a few choice excerpts from Google’s own blog on AI-generated content:
“Google’s ranking systems aim to reward original, high-quality content that demonstrates qualities of what we call E-E-A-T: expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness… Google has many years of experience dealing with automation being used in an attempt to game search results… Our focus on the quality of content, rather than how content is produced, is a useful guide that has helped us deliver reliable, high quality results to users for years… This said, it’s important to recognize that not all use of automation, including AI generation, is spam. AI has the ability to power new levels of expression in creativity and to serve as a critical tool to help people create great content for the web.”
They have really spelled it out in this passage that what matters to them, in their own words, is “helpful, reliable, people-first content”. That’s why I’m comfortable using AI for my fitness niche blog because I know the content I publish is high quality and serves the reader.
Spammy AI Content vs. Quality AI-Assisted Content
Disregarding AI content detectors isn’t a license to bulk generate a thousand articles and just slap them up on your website without a second glance because the quality still matters. You’re going to need to be more involved in the content creation process, especially if you’re worried about SEO.
It all comes back to that E-E-A-T that Google was talking about: Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust.
The biggest problems and risks when it comes to relying on AI to create content is:
- publishing inaccurate information
- rehashing information in a generic way
- inadvertently taking someone else’s ideas and trying to pass them off as your own
When you craft content with AI, you want to avoid the above scenarios at all costs.
The key to creating quality content with AI is a collaborative approach; you’ve got to give the AI something to work off of, or else it’s just going to fall back on its database of generic knowledge. The technique I use for this is called “seeding.” If creating unique, quality content with AI is something you struggle with, check out my video tutorial about how to seed ChatGPT for context and originality.
The other crucial factor is to treat AI outputs as a first rough draft. I never, ever publish AI content exactly as is. Spend some time editing, proofing, fact-checking, and plagiarism checking your draft.
“What if My Client Uses AI Content Detectors?”
If you’re a freelancer reading this, you may still need to deal with clients are using AI content detectors. If they are using such software, it is a pretty good indication that they don’t want you use AI to write their content.
So what do you do?
I believe we’ve arrived to the point in this AI content revolution where a discussion about AI is prudent prior to working with clients.
If they state they don’t want AI content, find out why. Maybe they’ve been burned in the past by spammy, low-quality AI content. Or maybe they’re worried about inaccurate info, or about the SEO implications because they still believe that myth that Google penalizes AI content.
If any of these scenarios are the case, it is an opportunity for you to educate them on Google’s most recent guidelines and your collaborative approach when it comes to writing AI-assisted content.
If, by the end of that conversation, they still don’t want to use AI, you should definitely honor that. Either don’t use it or part ways with that client and find clients that do want you to use it, because trust me, those clients exist. I get emails almost every week from brands who are looking for AI content specialists!
I hope this finally puts that issue to bed and assuages any concerns you had about AI content detectors. Remember that what really matters at the end of the day is the quality and uniqueness of your content.
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