Introduction to Grammarly Authorship
In an era where artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly integrated into writing, distinguishing between text generated by AI and that crafted by humans has become a significant challenge. While several detection tools have emerged to address this issue, their results have been mixed. Now, Grammarly is introducing its own solution: Grammarly Authorship. This new tool aims to accurately identify which parts of a document were created by AI and which were written by humans, setting it apart from its predecessors.
How Grammarly Authorship Works
Grammarly Authorship is designed to operate across a vast digital landscape, functioning within 500,000 apps and websites. What makes this tool unique is its ability to track the writing process in real-time, rather than merely analyzing the final document. By monitoring the creation of text, Authorship can determine whether a human typed the content, if it was copied and pasted from another source, or if it was generated by AI.
Unlike other AI detection tools that rely on algorithms to spot AI-generated content, Authorship’s approach is more comprehensive. It tracks every keystroke, making it possible to differentiate between text that was directly typed and text that was inserted from an external source. This capability allows it to identify the origin of each section of a document with greater precision.
Launch and Availability
Grammarly plans to launch Authorship in beta next month, initially for Google Docs users. The tool will be available to all Grammarly customers, including those using the free version, as well as paid subscribers to Premium, Business, and Education plans. By the end of the year, Authorship will also be integrated into Microsoft Word and Apple’s Pages, extending its reach to both desktop and web versions of these platforms.
A Focus on the Education Market
While Grammarly Authorship will be accessible to all users, the company is particularly targeting the education sector. This focus stems from ongoing issues with false positives, where students’ work is incorrectly flagged as AI-generated. As Jenny Maxwell, head of Grammarly for Education, explained, “As the school year begins, many institutions lack consistent and clear AI policies, even though half of people ages 14–22 say they have used generative AI at least once. This lack of clarity has contributed to an overreliance on imperfect AI detection tools.”
Maxwell emphasized that what’s needed is a tool that facilitates a productive conversation about the role of AI in education. “Authorship does just that by giving students an easy way to show how they wrote their paper, including if and how they interacted with AI tools,” she added.
Key Features of Grammarly Authorship
Once activated in a document, Authorship categorizes text into various segments: typed by a human, generated by AI, modified with AI assistance, pasted from a known or unknown source, or edited by Grammarly or another spell checker. Users can easily view these categorizations and access key details about Authorship’s analysis.
The tool also provides an overall analysis of the document, breaking down the time spent writing and the number of active writing sessions. Additionally, an Authorship report includes the full text of the document, with each section color-coded to indicate its origin. A unique feature is the authoring replay, which allows users to watch how the text was created, offering a clear view of the writing process.
For students, this tool offers a way to ensure their work meets the required guidelines and provides objective data in cases of AI-generated plagiarism accusations. Early next year, Grammarly plans to enhance Authorship by prompting students to cite any text sourced externally, further supporting academic integrity.
The Competitive Landscape
Grammarly isn’t the first company to attempt AI content detection. OpenAI, the organization behind ChatGPT, launched its own AI detector in 2023, only to withdraw it shortly after due to low accuracy. Although detection tools have improved, they still struggle with issues like false positives. Whether Grammarly Authorship will outperform its competitors remains to be seen, but its real-time tracking feature offers a promising approach.
