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Grammarly Authorship aims to identify whether content was created by AI, a human, or a combination of both. While the tool will be accessible to all users, it is specifically targeted at the education sector.
In the era of artificial intelligence (AI), distinguishing whether text was written by a bot or a person has become more challenging. Although several detection tools have emerged with varied success, Grammarly is launching its new tool, which aims to more accurately identify which sections of a document were generated by AI versus humans.
Named Grammarly Authorship, the new program will operate across 500,000 apps and websites. This software aims to pinpoint the origin of each section of a document, revealing whether it was written by a person, copied from another source, or generated by AI.
Unlike other products that use algorithms to detect AI-generated content, Authorship monitors all text written in a document. Active throughout the writing process, it can distinguish between text typed by a human and text copied from external sources.
Authorship will enter beta in Google Docs for all Grammarly users next month, with plans to expand to Microsoft Word and Apple’s Pages by the end of the year. It will be available in all versions of Google Docs, including both free and paid, as well as in all instances of Word, both desktop and web-based.
Grammarly provides various plans, including a free basic version, a $12-per-month Premium subscription, a $15-per-month Business subscription, and a version for schools and students. Authorship will be available across all these plans, including the free version.
While Authorship will be available to individuals, businesses, and other customers, Grammarly is specifically targeting the education sector. This focus is due in part to issues with false positives, where students’ original work is mistakenly identified as AI-generated.
Jenny Maxwell, head of Grammarly for Education, stated, “As the school year starts, many institutions lack consistent and clear AI policies, despite the fact that half of people aged 14–22 report using generative AI at least once. This uncertainty has led to an overreliance on imperfect AI detection tools, causing friction between professors and students when papers are wrongly flagged as AI-generated.
Maxwell added, “What the market lacks is a tool that promotes a constructive dialogue about AI’s role in education. Authorship addresses this by providing students with an easy way to demonstrate how they created their papers, including any interaction with AI tools.”
Once activated in a document, Authorship will automatically classify text as either typed by a human, generated by AI, modified by AI, pasted from a known or unknown source, or edited by Grammarly or another spell checker. Whether you’re writing or reviewing the document, you will also have access to key details about Authorship’s analysis.
Authorship analytics will categorize text into various types, such as human-typed, AI-generated, or pasted from known or unknown sources. The tool will provide an overall analysis of the document, including metrics like total writing time and the number of active writing sessions.
The Authorship report will include the complete text of the document, with each section color-coded to indicate whether it was written by a person, generated or edited by AI, or pasted from an external source. An authoring replay feature will visually show how the text appeared throughout the writing process.
For students, Authorship will help ensure that reports or assignments adhere to teacher guidelines and provide objective evidence in cases of suspected AI-generated plagiarism. Starting early next year, the tool will also prompt students to cite any text sourced from external materials.
Other companies, including OpenAI, have introduced or attempted to launch their own AI detection tools. However, achieving near-perfect accuracy has been difficult. In 2023, OpenAI released and later withdrew its AI detection tool due to accuracy issues. Although these tools have seen improvements, false positives and other inaccuracies persist. Whether Grammarly Authorship will outperform existing tools remains to be seen when it launches next month.