Did you use a little AI help in writing your academic paper? Watch out, because an AI detector could flag your work.
More and more universities are using AI detectors to find out whether you’ve secretly involved AI tools like ChatGPT, JenniAI, or Paperpal in your writing process.
Sometimes, though, these detectors flag your work even if you didn’t use any AI at all!
No need to panic just yet and fear handing in your paper. In this article, I’ll show you 7 secret tips to help you avoid triggering an AI detector and make your texts look more human.
What is an AI Detector and How Does it Work?
More and more students are using AI tools like ChatGPT to help them with their writing.
Sure, universities could just stop using papers as a form of assessment. But since universities aren’t too keen on changing their exam formats, and papers are actually useful for learning how to do academic work, another solution is needed.
Enter AI detectors, which try to figure out whether parts of your paper were written by an AI or if you toiled over them yourself. Naturally, universities are also jumping on this bandwagon and using these tools to assess academic work.
These detectors use algorithms to check if your paper shows patterns typical of AI-generated texts.
Because AIs tend to use certain sentence structures and phrases that people wouldn’t normally use. They also check for logic. AI outputs are often just too perfectly structured, and everything feels a bit “too smooth.”
Let’s say your text stands out in one of these areas. Then the AI detector goes off. And that could make your supervisor suspicious.
At my university, for example, AI detectors aren’t allowed to be used as “proof” of an attempt to cheat.
Still, every submission goes through Turnitin, a plagiarism detection software that now also includes an AI detector. As a supervisor, I then get a score that indicates how likely it is that AI was used. What I do with that information is up to me.
Unfortunately, some detectors flag texts even if no AI was used.
So, it’d be helpful to know how to make sure your academic work doesn’t even raise suspicion in the first place.
And here’s how you can do that.
7 Secret Tips Against AI Detectors
#1 No Copy & Paste
Sounds obvious, but trust me—I’ve seen it all.
Don’t just copy texts directly from an AI tool and paste them into your work!
Sure, it’s super tempting to use copy & paste and have a chapter written in seconds.
Don’t do it.
What universities will do more and more is simply ask you about a specific part of your paper. If you don’t know the sources you’ve cited or can’t answer a simple question about “your” text, your grade will tank fast.
So feel free to use AI to get creative and generate ideas, but always rewrite the text yourself. What would be great, too, is paraphrasing your SELF-written text with AI to improve grammar and sentence structure.
That brings us to tip number two.
#2 Use Synonyms and Change Sentence Structure
Let’s say you’ve hit a writing block and just can’t move forward. So you let AI inspire you.
It happens to the best of us. Oops.
To avoid having AI-generated text sneak into your paper, you should at least change the sentence structure and use synonyms.
AI detectors can recognize sentence patterns commonly found in AI-generated texts. So, if you completely restructure your sentences, you make it harder for the AI detector to identify these patterns.
You can practice this by creating multiple variations of a sentence. Practice makes perfect here too. At first, it might be difficult, but eventually, you’ll be able to rewrite sentences quickly and easily.
After rewriting several sentences, it’s worth reading through the text to make sure everything feels coherent.
#3 Make Your Text More Human
As mentioned before, AI-generated texts often sound too good to be true. This is largely because AI uses very formal and precise language. That’s why AI detectors flag texts that are too smooth and flawless. Avoid this by trying to use a more human tone and vocabulary.
The beauty of academic writing doesn’t come from perfection but from originality. An AI can’t achieve that because it always uses the word that’s most likely to fit next.
Riemer and Peter (2024) from the University of Sydney call them “style engines.” This means generative AI is very good at mimicking a style—and that’s exactly the problem. True originality can’t come from that.
By incorporating the unpredictable into your text, you make it original and prevent an AI detector from being triggered.
#4 Keep “Higher-Level Thinking” to Yourself
AI tools often cram a lot of facts into a short section and sometimes sound generic because of it. This is another reason why AI detectors flag texts.
So avoid overloading your text with too many facts or information. Instead of just explaining the bare facts, keep it brief. An academic paper isn’t a Wikipedia article, it’s an argument that unfolds gradually.
For example, you could include a theoretical perspective to look at a topic from a new angle.
An AI would only come up with that if you fed it the idea. So as long as higher-level thinking remains your responsibility, you’re on safe ground.
Let’s say you’re writing a paper on digital transformation in the service sector.
You could just describe the topic and the related literature. An AI could do that too—so don’t expect a top grade here.
But if you come up with the original idea to analyze your topic through the lens of French pragmatism, like Boltanski and Thévenot (1991), then you’re about to create an original piece of work.
Meanwhile, your classmates might use ChatGPT to churn out a paper in 30 minutes and spend the rest of the day watching Netflix.
But who do you think will know more after graduation?
If you dig into Boltanski and Thévenot (1991) and use your paper as a chance to grow intellectually, you’ve already won.
It’s about resisting the quick AI solution and investing in work that truly helps you move forward.
#5 Avoid Low-Quality Sources
Sure, you can use ChatGPT or other AI tools for research. For example, the tool Consensus is super helpful for finding suitable sources.
However, you shouldn’t just blindly trust the information. AI tools often give useful summaries and explanations, but they don’t rely on primary scientific sources. To ensure the facts are correct, cross-check the AI’s info with other sources. Use reliable sources like books, scholarly articles, or databases.
At the same time, AI might give you a source that actually exists but is from an MDPI-published journal. These are often poorly peer-reviewed and therefore highly questionable.
I would never cite such an article, and I’d grade a paper relying on such sources more harshly.
For you, this means you need to develop the ability to differentiate between good and bad sources. AI can’t do this—yet—and it’s a risk for the quality of your academic work!
#6 Know the Difference Between Support and Plagiarism
In my opinion, AI is here to stay. Learning to use tools like ChatGPT properly will be an essential skill in the future job market. That’s why I don’t think you should avoid using AI entirely in your studies.
Instead, you should start using these tools right now—just in a smart way.
Many universities agree and allow AI use, but you must be transparent about how and to what extent you used it.
It’s perfectly fine to use AI tools as a support—even for academic writing. See AI as your creative assistant, helping you develop your ideas and structure your thoughts—not as a tool that writes your entire paper for you.
I’ve already made a detailed video on AI and plagiarism, which you can find linked here.
However, AI detectors work differently than plagiarism scanners. If you use AI to paraphrase, the plagiarism scanner won’t go off, but the AI detector likely will.
So, if you want to use AI for paraphrasing or spell check, just get your supervisor’s approval. Then, write a statement disclosing this in your affidavit at the end of your paper, and you won’t have to worry about AI detectors again.
Of course, this only works if your university’s exam regulations don’t explicitly prohibit AI use. So check your university’s current AI policy beforehand.
#7 Use an AI Detector Yourself
A final tip: Before submitting your paper, run it through various AI detectors or plagiarism scanners. There are several online tools now that can detect if your text might be flagged as AI-generated.
You can test an AI detector yourself and play around with it.
If you want to try it out, for example, you can use Quillbot’s free AI detector: https://quillbot.com/ai-content-detector.
Test your own text, the AI-generated text, and something in between. You’ll be able to spot patterns and see how changes affect the score.
This knowledge will help you when writing your academic paper and applying the previous 6 tips!
Conclusion
AI detectors have become really good at spotting patterns in AI-generated texts. But they’re not infallible.
In English, you’d call this an “arms race”: AI detectors and AI tools constantly push each other forward, with one always trying to stay a step ahead of the other.
This is why no student will fail an exam solely because of an AI detector. Sure, plagiarism can be definitively proven, as that’s relatively easy to verify.
That said, this doesn’t apply to AI-generated content. There will always be some doubt. Someone could simply have a writing style that’s a lot like a generative AI tool’s. There’s no surefire way to prove a text was generated by AI.
But I can’t stress this enough: if you use AI, don’t shut off your own thinking.
Instead, think of AI as a tool that makes things easier, giving you more space for genuine creative thought. But you really have to use that space—and not waste the time you save on something else. Only then will AI help you study more effectively than people could 10 years ago, allowing you to produce truly original work.