In this age of digital implementation and high-speed innovation, it has become increasingly difficult for many to discern what is real and what is fabrication. When artificial intelligence (AI) generators were first unveiled to the public in the early 2020s, they were viewed as fascinating oddities. People began to utilize them out of sheer curiosity, predominantly for the niche value of having interacted with them at all; generative AI writing services were inundated with silly prompts that they turned into essays, AI image generators were overrun with users looking to forge their own memes incarnate. But what was once viewed as kitschy or quirky quickly became authentically of interest, merit, and value to many.
AI unlocked an entire new world of potential for individuals, businesses, and more. Practically overnight, the generative abilities of AI systems democratized access to advanced creative tools. No longer did an individual have to have any kind of training, talent, or practice in things such as data analysis, writing, or image construction; AI could simply do it for you with a few essential keystrokes. To this end, an AI detector became an essential tool for internet usage. As the worldwide web was overloaded with new content created by millions of users in the span of seconds, thanks to AI generators, it became increasingly difficult to discern what was authentic and what was generated.
The Origins of the Internet
While the internet has a long and storied history dating as far back as the 1960s to one degree or another, it began to really take hold as a force in popular culture in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, as computers made their way out of Silicon Valley garages and into suburban homes around the world. For the first time ever, the entire world’s population was connected through a singular platform and common language, a digitized one.
Prior to the internet, people’s primary sources of information were external resources such as news channels on television or newspaper editorials, which were published daily. However, as the internet’s power and influence spread over the course of a few short years, online became the primary source of many users’ education and information. This was doubly complicated by the advent of social media sites in the mid-‘00s, which served to deepen users’ emotional connection to the online world in some frankly surprising and unprecedented ways.
Social Media’s Role in Modern Culture
What began with sites such as Friendster and MySpace has been carried on into the modern day by platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. The original intention for such sites was to unite humanity in a way never seen before, effectively digitizing the interconnected human experience and looking to provide meaningful sources of communication, information and shared empathy around the world. And while the relative success or failure of that initial motivation can be debated, what cannot is the popularity of such sites. Today, some two decades after their initial founding, social media sites have become an even more vital pillar of popular culture than ever before.
One needs to look no further than the recent and highly publicized events of the proposed TikTok ban in the United States to see how integral such sites are to people’s lives. Even though the site was ultimately banned for less than fourteen total hours in the country, it provoked gargantuan resistance and emotional outpouring from people who relied upon it for communication, information, and even their livelihoods. Even before the ban was overturned, users from the site were migrating en masse to other social media sites, attempting to find a worthy substitute. Regardless of personal opinions on TikTok, the message was clear: social media sites have become inextricably linked to the modern American condition, and there is no going back.
Misinformation on Social Media
It’s clear that the internet has become the primary source of news and information for a great many users, which is why it has become such a prolific and persistent problem that AI has made it nigh unintelligible for many users as to what is real and what isn’t. While the keenly discerning eye can still fairly easily differentiate an AI-generated image from an authentic one, most people scrolling aimlessly through their social media feeds are not doing so with a discerning eye. The state of the majority of social media users is one of passive acceptance. They aren’t actively engaged with the information they are being fed by a site but are instead just openly internalizing it. Many view social media as an escape or respite from the troubles of their daily lives; they turn to it to provide a few moments of relaxation. But because of this very fact, users are left all the more defenseless and vulnerable to misinformation from such sources.
In the past few weeks, this has become an even more pronounced issue. Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Meta (the parent company of both Facebook and Instagram), has recently announced that the company’s sites will begin to forego any and all fact-checking efforts. While these rules and regulations had failed to prevent widespread misinformation in the past, they had at least been able to curtail the most vehemently vile of efforts. But now, these sites will be operating completely unchecked, and in the age of AI, that’s an incredibly dangerous and volatile way to operate. If anyone can create anything with AI, and these sites are now allowing users to say or post anything, then anything and everything, regardless of any factual validity, can be presented as fact, with additional fictitious sources to back it up.
How AI Detectors Can Save the Internet
To this end, the widespread impact of digital misinformation and AI-generated work has made AI detectors all the more crucial. They are able to analyze, parse, and ultimately trace the roots of any given piece of content (whether it be written or image-related) to determine whether or not it is AI-generated. Not only can this help regular users become more savvy internet browsers, capable of better validating the information they are being fed on social media, but it also has larger uses in academic and entertainment fields.
With the spread of AI-generated content, academic integrity, media reliability, and content authenticity have become increasingly pressing issues. AI detectors help maintain trust, prevent plagiarism, and ensure originality in new works.
AI detectors face challenges keeping up with the breakneck pace of innovation and advancement in the field of AI. Technology is moving and evolving so quickly that it has to evolve just as fast to keep up. However, as a last line of defense against an onslaught of AI-generated content, AI detectors are an invaluable resource.