The era of ‘humanised’ texts: how AI is trying to hide its own style
The paradox of modernity lies precisely here: writing like a human, but with the help of an algorithm
The paradox of modernity lies precisely here: writing like a human, but with the help of an algorithm.
Relying on AI for writing has now become extremely widespread: from important emails to annual reports, academic theses and even more mundane tasks such as love letters. It’s a shortcut: AI processes the text in a matter of seconds, saving us time and effort. This is tolerable, but to what extent? The main concerns arise particularly in education: using AI for writing means delegating to a machine a task that should be carried out using our own knowledge and refined through our capacity for analysis.
At least, it should. This is why many universities are increasingly relying on systems capable of determining whether a text is unauthorised copy-and-paste generated by AI. The problem is that these programmes are not infallible: several studies have shown that detectors can produce false positives and that their reliability varies depending on the type and length of the text. GPTZero, one of the first tools to gain popularity following the launch of ChatGPT, emerged precisely in this context, having been developed in early 2023 by Edward Tian, then a student at Princeton.
Beyond the actual effectiveness of the detectors, the issue of transparency remains. For the European Union, knowing when content has been generated or manipulated by AI has become important in order to safeguard information and enable citizens to understand the origin of what they are reading, watching or listening to. From 2 August 2026, the transparency requirements set out in Article 50 of the AI Act will apply, which also include the machine-readable labelling of content generated or manipulated by AI, including text.
In this context, Anthropic has beaten everyone to it, announcing that the Claude models launched from 2 August onwards incorporate an imperceptible, machine-readable watermark into the text, designed to withstand even standard copy-and-paste operations and subsequent modifications. The company is also developing tools to enable third parties to verify the presence of this watermark.
