Originality.AI Review: Detect AI-Generated Content

Are you planning to use AI content writing tools like ChatGPT or Jasper.ai and worried about the originality of the content?

If so, you’re not alone. Google’s spam policies prohibit content that is “generated programmatically without producing anything original or adding sufficient value.” Their systems are incredibly sophisticated, and they will likely learn to detect heavily AI-driven content over time.

There’s already a tool out there designed for this express purpose called Originality.AI. Created by a team of content marketing and AI experts, it claims a 94% success rate in detecting AI-written content.

Originality.AI allows content creators to detect content generated by popular AI tools and assess overall content quality and originality. Over time, there’s a high chance that using an AI content detector will become as essential as using a plagiarism checker.

In this review, I’ll explain what Originality.AI is, how it works, and what it costs to get started.

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I may earn a commission. Feel free to visit my Affiliate Disclaimer page for more information!

What is Originality.AI?

Originality.AI markets itself as a “plagiarism detector and AI detector built for serious content publishers.” The plagiarism and AI detectors represent the tool’s two core functions.

OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, released the tool using a natural language processing model called “GPT 3.5.” Originality.AI recently updated its model to detect GPT 3.5-generated content, along with the past versions of GPT.

The company claims a 94% success rate in detecting AI-written content as of GPT 3.0, the leading natural language processing model before ChatGPT/GPT 3.5. Many popular artificial intelligence tools used GPT 3.0 before ChatGPT’s release.

Who is Originality.AI Best For?

Originality.AI is a fantastic tool for anyone who publishes content online. The company lists three primary use cases:

1. Web Publisher. The tool helps ensure content is original, sufficiently free from AI, and plagiarism-free. If you run a website, Originality.AI will help you avoid Google penalties – even if you don’t use AI in your content. It can benefit serious web publishers and new bloggers alike.

2. Content Agency. If you run a content marketing agency or manage freelance writers at scale, Originality.AI can help ensure that you create original content for clients. Over time, the freelance writing space will be heavily influenced by AI, so you’ll want to hire writers that can produce original content.

3. Website Buyer. Originality.AI is a fantastic due diligence tool if you’re purchasing a website. Using it, you can ensure the previous publisher didn’t use AI to produce all of the site’s content. Originality.AI is planning to release a full site scan feature soon.

I fall into the first two categories with my own sites (Jumpcoast and NameBounce). Since starting with Originality.AI, I’ve checked almost every post I create.

Originality.AI Features & How It Works

Originality.AI is incredibly simple to use. Here’s how it works:

First, you’ll click on Originality.AI’s Content Scan feature and paste in your content.

Next, you’ll select if you want to detect AI, check for plagiarism, or both. After that, all you need to do is click “scan now.”

Content Scanner / AI Detector

Right now, Originality.AI’s Content Scanner and AI Detector is a super simple tool. It simply outputs an AI detection score. The score is calculated on a scale from 0-100, with 100 being completely free of AI.

Currently, there’s no ability to see how Originality.AI generated the score or to get feedback on specific parts of the text. The tool just launched, so I expect they’ll add this ability over time as it evolves.

One great way to use Originality.AI is to paste in sections of your post one by one. This way, you can see if a section is likely causing issues and revise them to re-word phrases or add in original content.

Plagiarism Scanner

Originality.AI also offers a plagiarism scanner tool. Pricing is around the same price as Copyscape, the leading plagiarism checker on the market.

To test their plagiarism scanner, I pasted Originality.AI’s home page into their tool. Their tool listed an 80% plagiarism score:

They also include a table showing where the tool found plagiarism. Sure enough, their home page was 100% matched! I’m not sure why the overall score only showed 80%, but it was accurate in showing that the content was plagiarized.

I don’t typically use their plagiarism scanner, as I have SurferSEO and Grammarly subscriptions with built-in plagiarism checkers. Since I use them with every post, it’s easier to check it in there and save my Originality.AI credits.

Full Site Scan

Originality.AI’s full site scan feature is not up yet, but in their press release, the team mentioned that it would be live soon.

With this feature, Originality.AI’s scanner will complete a plagiarism and AI-generated content check on an entire website.

This feature will be super helpful to people buying websites or publishers who want to conduct content audits. The company’s pricing is incredibly affordable (as you’ll see in the next section), so even a massive site with 1,000 blog posts (2,000 words each) would only have to pay $400 for a complete website scan.

Originality.AI Pricing

As I mentioned earlier, Originality.AI’s pricing is super affordable. They price their service in terms of credits, and each credit costs $0.01. If you’re looking for an Originality.AI coupon, you can use the code BeOriginal to save 50% on your first 2,000 credits (200,000 words).

A credit scans 100 words with either the AI content or plagiarism detector. If you want to do both, the credits required for the scan double.

Here’s an example of how Originality.AI’s pricing works. For a smaller blog with 100 posts, it would cost only $40 to scan the whole site for plagiarism and AI content. Whereas for a large blog with 2,000 posts, it would only cost $400 to scan the entire site.

One 2,000-word post with an SEO content writer can cost $400 on its own! As a result, paying for credits with Originality.AI is a no-brainer for just about every content creator.

It probably would have been easier if they just priced it per word, but the credit system is still pretty easy to figure out. Either way, the tool is super affordable – they probably could have doubled the pricing for the value they provide.

Originality.AI Pros and Cons

Originality.AI is a new tool, so the creators haven’t fully built out a complete set of features. Here’s a list of the pros and cons of the tool:

Originality.AI Pros

1. It’s incredibly easy to use – all you need to do is paste your content and get a score.

2. I tested all of the AI Content Detectors on the market, and Originality.AI was by far the most accurate of all the tools (see the image in the “Originality.AI Alternatives” section below)

3. The pricing is super cheap. For example, Surfer SEO’s basic plan covers about 240,000 words/year, equaling a cost of $588/year. Using Originality.AI to detect AI-generated content with the same word count would cost $24.

Originality.AI Cons

1. The tool doesn’t give you insight into what parts of your content the tool flagged as AI. If the tool showed you what needed improvement, the value would soar.

2. The creators don’t share any of the factors behind what flags the content. I was able to reverse-engineer some of it in the case study section below, but there’s little transparency behind their algorithm.

3. There’s no benchmarking capability. It would be helpful to show if there was other AI-generated content in the search results, along with the corresponding content scores.

Overall, considering its low price, I don’t think these cons outweigh the pros of Originality.AI.

Originality.AI Alternatives

Originality.AI’s press release headline was “…The First AI Tool Available to Detect Content Created by Popular AI Writing Tools.” Despite that, a number of competitors have sprung up recently.

I reviewed and tested all of them in our best AI content detectors post. Originality.AI had the best results, but another tool (Content at Scale’s AI Detector) had reasonable accuracy:

There are also plenty of plagiarism checkers on the market, so I’ll go through them here too!

AI Content Detectors

Content at Scale AI Detector

Content at Scale is an AI content generation service that produces full-length, SEO-optimized blog posts in a few clicks without human intervention.

Given that they focus on creating content that can pass AI detection tests, they have a vested interest in creating an accurate AI detection tool, and made it available on their website for everyone to use. As far as free tools go, it’s pretty great.

Overall, it was the second-most accurate tool in our testing. It’s free, but limits you to around 400 words. Still, it’s great for checking short-form content like HARO query replies.

Copyleaks AI Content Detector

Copyleaks offers a full suite of services to help content marketers, agencies, and companies create and manage high-quality content. They created their own AI content detector, likely as a lead generation tool.

While the tool wasn’t super accurate in our testing, it is the only free tool with no word count limits.

Plagiarism Checkers

Grammarly

Grammarly is one of my favorite writing tools and offers excellent grammar and wording suggestions. They also provide a plagiarism checker within their tool.

Grammarly’s premium offerings, which include their plagiarism checker, start at $12/month. It’s more expensive than Originality.AI but offers a completely different set of features.

Copyscape

Copyscape is the world’s most prominent plagiarism checker. Many freelance writing job posts will require writers to check for plagiarism using Copyscape.

Copyscape costs 3 cents for the first 200 words and 1 cent for every 100 words after that. The pricing is basically the same as Originality.AI, aside from the extra penny for the first 200 words.

Surfer SEO

Surfer SEO is a data-driven tool that helps web publishers create optimized content for SEO. The company’s defining feature is a 0-100 SEO score, which grades content quality and relevancy for a target keyword. They also offer a keyword research tool, a “grow flow” feature, and a SERP analyzer.

Surfer provides a free plagiarism checker within their subscription. Their basic plan costs $59/month, with a discount if you prepay annually. Like Grammarly, it’s more expensive than Originality.AI but offers another unique set of features.

Case Study: Turning ChatGPT Outputs Into Original Content

In this case study, I wanted to see if you could take a piece of AI-written content and have it be seen as “original” with some editing.

To start, I asked ChatGPT to “write a 1,000-word blog post on finding a company name.” It ended up only outputting around 500 words. I pasted that into Originality.AI, and sure enough, it was accurate:

Next, I did light editing on the output through Quillbot (a paraphrasing tool) and Grammarly. Doing this improved the score slightly, but Originality.AI still accurately saw the content as being AI-driven:

Finally, I added some sentences with unique insights and links to external resources. My focus was on adding my original insights to the tool from my experience running a business name generator.

ChatGPT formatted its post with seven essential factors when selecting a company name. To edit it, I added a single unique insight to the end of each post. Here are the sentences I added:

1. Memorability: “There’s a sea of noise in today’s online world, and you don’t want to create barriers to people remembering your name.”

2. Maintain simplicity: “How much easier is it to spell Apple than AmerisourceBergen?”

3. Avoid using industry jargon: “Plumbers often use the term “rooter” in their names. Enough have used it in their name that it’s now somewhat familiar, but I still had to Google what on earth a rooter was when I saw it in a name.”

4. Consider your target demographic: “For example, with Jumpcoast, I wanted to take the process of starting a business and make it easy and straightforward.  Since starting a business is generally seen as difficult, differentiation was vital for me to resonate with my target audience.”

5. Be distinct: “According to UpCounsel, trademark disputes can cost $300-400 per hour in legal fees, which isn’t something you’ll want to pay!”

6. Consider combining words: “I did this with both Jumpcoast and NameBounce. According to the branding agency A Hundred Monkeys, 76% of their two- and three-word names passed an initial trademark screening, compared to 45% for one-word names.”

7. Try it out: “Google Surveys is a great option to get feedback from your target market at a low cost.”

The result:

Even though 80% of the content in that piece was still AI-written, it became original once I added:

1. Personal insights. Artificial intelligence can’t share accurate details on my experience with naming Jumpcoast or being confused by the word “rooter” in plumbing business names. I’m not a bot, and showing that I was confused likely helped communicate that in the edits!

2. Connections that an AI probably wouldn’t make. I remember seeing AmerisourceBergen’s name and wondering why the two companies decided to smash their names together after their merger. An AI isn’t likely to ever generate an output that compares Apple with AmerisourceBergen (unless you tell it to do so).

3. Unique source references. I know about that survey from A Hundred Monkeys since I’ve been studying naming for a long time. It’s unlikely that an AI or generic content creator would find that survey and cite it in a post on naming.

Originality.AI Review Conclusion: Should You Use It In Your Content Workflow?

Originality.AI’s AI content detection feature is a must-have for anyone publishing blog content.

Not only does it detect AI in content, but it’s a great proxy for evaluating content quality and originality. The pricing is incredibly affordable, and it’s easy to incorporate it into your content workflow.

If you’re ready to get started, you can use the coupon code BeOriginal to save 50% on your first 2,000 credits (covering 200,000 words for $10).