Your writing was flagged as AI — what now?

A flag is not a confession

Detectors estimate how much text resembles machine prose. They do not see your ChatGPT history, and they do not prove misconduct. Honest tools — including this one — say results are probabilistic indicators.

Formal school writing, tutoring, grammar tools and writing in a second language all raise scores. Many false positives look "too clean" rather than "too smart".

What to bring to the conversation

Keep drafts, outlines, notes and version history if you have them. Be ready to explain how you built a flagged paragraph. Asking to see the sentence-level highlights is reasonable — a percentage alone is a weak accusation.

If English is not your first language, say so. Published evaluations of commercial detectors have repeatedly shown higher false-positive rates on non-native writing. That context belongs in the review.

If you did use AI

Follow your course policy. Disclosure beats a guessing game. Some courses allow drafting help with citation; others ban it. The detector cannot sort that for you — your syllabus can.

Do not run the text through a "humanizer" and hope the problem disappears. Mid-scale hybrid verdicts still need an honest conversation, and rewriting to evade a detector is usually worse process than admitting the draft help.

Questions

Can a detector flag writing I did myself?

Yes. Clean, evenly paced academic prose triggers the same features as generated text. Ask to review highlighted sentences with your instructor.

How do I show I did not use ChatGPT?

Drafts, notes, timestamps and being able to explain the argument are stronger than arguing with the percentage. Request the sentence-level report.

I am not a native English writer — does that matter?

It can. Detectors over-flag second-language writing. Raise that with your reviewer; it is a documented limitation, not an excuse you invented.

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