Large language models like ChatGPT write impressively well--so well, in fact, that they've become a problem. Students have begun using these models to ghostwrite assignments, leading some schools to ban ChatGPT. In addition, these models are also prone to producing text with factual errors, so wary readers may want to know if generative AI tools have been used to ghostwrite news articles or other sources before trusting them. What can teachers and consumers do? Existing tools to detect AI-generated text sometimes do poorly on data that differs from what they were trained on.

The world's most famous chatbot, ChatGPT, was released in late November of last year. The immediate response was astonishment, followed almost immediately by terror about its ramifications -- most notably that it might generate school essays for dishonest kids. Yesterday, almost exactly two months later, OpenAI, ChatGPT's parent company released what many users hope will be the antidote to the poison. OpenAI's "classifier for indicating AI-written text" is the company's latest invention, and it's as easy-to-use as one could want: Copy-paste text into the box, click "Submit," and get your result. But if you're expecting a straight answer, you're going to be disappointed.