April 2, 2026· 49 min

This Is How to Tell if Writing Was Made by AI

Orality
Model
81%

Oral Indicators

Agonistic38%
huge, obviously, very
Engagement77%
your, you, our
Memory Aids100%
so, right, now
Repetition100%
like (304x), it's (93x), know (78x)
Parallelism73%
So there's a lot of noise abou..., So let's talk about results...., And I'm Tracy Alloway....
Sound Patterns82%
89 question(s), alliteration: "from fidelity", alliteration: "and access"
Formulaic Phrases6%
you know what, i mean, the thing is

Literate Indicators

Hedging7%
may, probably, maybe
Passive Voice8%
was generated, being generated, is often
Abstract Nouns15%
fidelity, generation, business
Subordination8%
because, nonetheless, since
Sentence Length27%
Avg: 11.6 words/sentence
Word Complexity45%
introducing, fidelity, generation
Academic Markers0%
Impersonal Style23%
832 personal pronouns found
Descriptive Style98%
seamlessly, actually, apply

Description

When you consider the fact that many people don't know how and where to place a comma, it's safe to say that AI is already better than most people at writing. It's clean copy. It can be surprisingly persuasive. And sometimes, it's even informative. But there's frequently still something about it that just seems... off. Many people can tell quite quickly when they're reading AI-generated text. And beyond the style, the existence of AI generated text has all kinds of ramifications, from making it easier for students to cheat, to the rise of deceptive chatbots, to potentially degrading the experience on sites like Reddit. So how do you actually tell if a piece of writing was generated by AI? On this episode, we speak with Max Spero, the CEO of Pangram Labs, a company that built software to detect whether a piece of content was AI generated or not. We talk about the advanced techniques they use, the risk of false positives and false negatives, and what AI writing means in general for the future of the Internet. Read more: The AI Video Apps Gaining Ground After OpenAI Declared Sora Dead Credit Derivative Trading Shatters Records on Iran War, AI Fears Only Bloomberg - Business News, Stock Markets, Finance, Breaking & World News subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at  bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.