Can this ChatGPT detector unerringly spot robotic idioms?

Princeton senior Edward Tian created GPTZero and launched it on January 2, 2023

As someone who teaches at university — and works as a journalist — I could hardly wait to try out the app created by Princeton senior Edward Tian for teachers to bust AI-generated essay submissions.

The app, GPTZero, was launched on January 2. It’s supposed to detect whether text is written by ChatGPT, the chatbot that has the facility to muse on anything and everything, in the time it takes to blink.

Mr Tian, who is majoring in computer science and minoring in journalism, clearly has a vested interest of sorts in ensuring that wordsmithing doesn’t fall entirely to robots. He says his app can “quickly and efficiently” decipher whether a human or ChatGPT authored an essay. In an initial tweet introducing GPTZero, he noted: “there’s so much chatgpt hype going around. is this and that written by AI? we as humans deserve to know!”

Within days of the new app’s launch, it had at least 30,000 try-outs, so much so it …