Melissa Mae is a professional essay writer with five years of experience in educational content creation.

She assists college students with academic and creative writing assignments. Melissa is among the top writers at EssayShark, meaning that clients appreciate her help and listen to her expertise in improving the quality of written work.

After ChatGPT and other corresponding tools arose and took over the world a few years ago, — Who doesn’t remember that frenzy in November 2022? — Ms. Mae noted a new pattern:

Back then, most rushed to build texts with ChatGPT, and the tool’s ability to generate convincing imitations of human writing that could “cheat” plagiarism checkers was enough for them to submit AI-generated content for teacher review or online publication. Now, most still run to build texts with ChatGPT, but their focus has shifted to how to make an essay not AI-detectable.

And there’s the catch:

Instead of working harder on content quality, users stubbornly continue to look for patterns and tricks that will allow them to “cheat” AI detectors. 

“It’s a dead end,” Melissa says.

“Paraphrase and synonymization aimed at making your texts more human won’t make them more original and qualitative,” she adds. Ms. Mae is sure that human writers will always win the “human or AI writing” battle, regardless of whether they are rookies or have been working in writing services for years.

“It’s enough for me to skim through your essay to see it wasn’t you but ChatGPT that wrote it.”

Melissa shares some patterns that make it easy to understand whether it was AI or human writing that created a text and how to check if an essay is AI-generated:

• AI often starts its texts with a declarative sentence followed by a list of examples on the subject. (In the realm, in the fast-paced world, [something] is a vital part, [something] plays a pivotal role, etc.)
• AI writers use vague and wordy sentences with no concrete examples. (You read and sink into overly complex sentence structures, trying to catch the point among the hesitant mumbling and balderdash.)
• AI uses long, similar-looking paragraphs with repetitive phrases throughout the text.
• The overabundance of redundant adverbs and gerunds in every second sentence written by AI makes the text sound inauthentic and not human. (Additionally, consequently, absolutely, definitely, undoubtedly, etc.)
• AI uses sophisticated words instead of neutral, “human” language. (Compare: “This can be an absolutely game-changing solution for your business” and “This is a new solution that can help your business.”)

AI-generated texts are full of “innovative,” “exceptional,” and “proven” statements that play “crucial” and “pivotal” roles in “effectively conveying” the information “in the pursuit” of matching today’s “ever-evolving” digital “landscape.”

“Why is my essay detected with AI?”

Ms. Mae says that more and more clients come to her with this question. Let’s say they have generated their work with the help of an AI essay writer, but now they want a human writer to check and improve its quality. Such an approach to content writing confuses her:

If your AI writing tool gives you a text you still need to revise, and you go to a human writer for that, why not seek professional writing help in the first place, thus saving your time, money, and nerves?

“Of course, a human writer’s help may appear a little more expensive than prompting ChatGPT with your essay,” Melissa continues. “Yet, it happens to be that very moment when the miser pays twice: You spend resources on AI writing, see the quality is poorer than you expected, and go to spend extra resources on text revision.”

She emphasizes that anyone working with texts will quickly see the difference between human and AI text. More than that, it will be easy for a teacher who knows a student’s writing style and skills to see when something looks awkward or atypical in an essay. For students, there’s also a risk of being caught red-handed:

Along with plagiarism, AI-generated writing assignments entail academic integrity violations and all the corresponding consequences, including expulsion from university.

There’s no AI writer (yet!) who can replicate the quality of a human author’s work:

• AI doesn’t have insights or original thoughts to share.
• AI can’t craft engaging narratives.
• AI can’t communicate a message via specific writing styles.
• AI can’t use emotional writing tactics to build connections with the audience via personalization.
• AI doesn’t maintain ethical standards in essay writing, which are “no copying, no rewriting, and no plagiarism.”

For now, working with professional writers is still safer and more reliable than working with AI. Tools like an AI summarizer, a grammar checker, an essay title generator, etc., are great helpful hands that simplify the writing process and save time.

But:

If you want to get an authentic, insightful, and engaging turn-key text, this is where AI writers will fail.

“They said ChatGPT would kick writers out of their niche,” Melissa smiles. “But guess what? We have even more work to do now. Those naysayers come to us and say:

‘Can you check and revise it so that it sounds better?'”

The essay writer admits this tendency isn’t only about students and their college papers.

The Internet is teeming with similar-looking AI-generated messages from web admins stuffing their resources with voiceless content instead of focusing on quality. Sinking in such superficial, low-quality information, we crave more human-written articles than ever.

In the age of AI-generated content, professional writers like Melissa Mae see it as their mission to communicate the enduring importance of human creativity and innovation.

What about you?

Will you outsource your essay to an AI tool or to a professional writer?

Photo by Nahrizul Kadri from Unsplash