Artificial intelligence is everyone’s favorite technology right now. Whether you are a student, business owner, marketer, or writer, AI is the system that is powering all the tools you are using.
Especially when it comes to writing, it can help you create outlines and drafts, aid you in generating topics and ideas, improve your grammar, and polish your overall writing.
However, with AI becoming more and more common, the kind of writing available on the internet is becoming more bland and generic. Audience is starting to grow tired of AI writing, and more people want content that sounds authentic, trustworthy, and natural.
If you are publishing content for your website, you would also want your writing to be original and human. Here’s how you can verify AI-generated text before you publish to ensure your content writer, team, or outsourced writing is authentic and credible.
Use an AI Detector
Everyone has heard the phrase, “fighting fire with fire.” So when the problem is AI, it can also be the solution. The first step to verifying your AI-generated content is using a tool that can spot when a piece of writing is automated.
The problem with generated texts is that they can contain hallucinations. This happens when AI doesn’t have a clear answer to your question, or it’s overwhelmed by requests, or even the actual system is overheated.
What it does is, when it can’t reach the solution it needs, it generates something based on the patterns it has learned from the data it consumed. You end up with something that looks and sounds accurate, but is, in fact, made up.
This is why using an AI text detector with a built-in hallucination checker can help you find which claims are unverified and possibly fake. This needs to be the first step, especially when you don’t have a lot of time at hand to process content before publication.
Verifying AI-generated Content Manually
While AI detectors and fact-checkers can do the trick quite neatly, especially when you are short on time, you may sometimes need to verify automated content manually. Here’s the six-step process to follow.
1. Must Check Factual Claims First
When content is written, it may contain perspectives and opinions, but many often have factual claims that you cannot publish without verifying. This is particularly true for AI content, because in case AI hallucinates, it can produce plenty of claims that are made up.
So, when running a manual check, go for the facts first and try to verify them. Think names, statistics, dates, locations, definitions, historical references, and even product details.
If the data learned by the AI tools lacks information about the particular thing the content is written about, it can present incorrect information in such a confident tone and polished sentence that most people won’t even question it. Your job is to question it.
The best practice would be to highlight each factual claim and then find reliable sources to confirm the claim before publishing. This can ensure no error slips past, protecting the credibility of the content you published.
2. Find the Original Source of Information
While wording and citations are often tell-tale signs, you should consider visiting the original source of the claim before approving it. These can be datasets, research papers, official reports, articles on a government website, or direct statements from an organization or expert.
This way, you can confirm the originality of the information and the accuracy of the quote, concept, or claim. If you cannot find the source, or it doesn’t actually support the claim, then the content can be revised before publication.
Please be aware that sometimes the claim can sound very close to the one in the source, without actually being the same. In that case, you need to analyze whether it is truly accurate.
3. Look For Missing Context
Sometimes the content will seem factually correct from the outside, while leaving out important details, or making up something to fill in for the claim.
Things like context, background, conditions, and exceptions can often change the whole meaning of the information.
Let’s say a statement of the information is true, but it still technically misleads the audience about things like the location, the time frame, the possible limitations, and the information source.
When manually reviewing, you must ask: Does the content explain the whole picture, or does it simplify the version just to support a claim, making it sound inaccurate or incomplete?
If the answer is unclear or narrow, you might have to add more context, get clarity, or revise the claim to ensure you only give accurate information. Remember that an omitted context can be just as misleading as a full error.
4. Carefully Review Citations and Links
Automated content often contains citations that look completely legit, but they either don’t exist or don’t actually support the claim they are supposed to.
Make sure to check every reference before publishing to avoid this type of error. Open each link to ensure it leads to the right sources, matches the statement in the text, supports the claim, and has been taken from a credible author, publication, or organization.
Keep an eye out for vague references, outdated pages, or sources that are too weak to support the claim. If the citation supporting the claim is irrelevant, misleading, or fabricated, you must replace it with a verified source or remove the claim entirely.
Make sure to follow this step closely, because publishing content with accuracy issues can shoot down the credibility of your website.
5. Assess Tone and Bias
When reviewing manually, you must analyze how the content sounds and whether it sounds factually logical. The problem with AI-generated content is that it can sound subtly one-sided. It may depict over-the-top confidence or sound too neutral.
Even if the writing is persuasive, if it’s not balanced, it may not be an accurate projection of reality. Notice if the writing has loaded language, repeated framing in favor of one specific perspective, unsupported opinions, or assumptions posed as facts.
Especially when writing educational, marketing, or news-related content, the tone tends to shape how readers perceive the message. If the output feels emotionally charged, one-dimensional, overly polished, or manipulative, make sure to change the content before publishing.
6. Check for Contradictions
As you review automated content, make sure to compare the text with possible contradictions to see if the ideas are strong and consistent.
Sometimes the same content can have contradictory ideas, like producing conflicting details, giving different dates, a definition changing in the middle, or a claim that is the opposite of the statement made earlier.
If there is conflicting information in the content, it can either reverse the meaning of the whole or simplify the subtleties.
This is why manual review is necessary to ensure the entire content is logically sound, stable, and flows the right way. When contradictions arise, revise the content, remove any inconsistencies, and make sure all claims are verified.
Final Thoughts
If you are publishing AI content, you must verify the information before you do; otherwise, you might end up spreading low-quality, inaccurate, and misleading information.
Either use a tool to ensure your content is accurate, or do it yourself manually. Following these six steps for manual check can help ensure that it converts your AI text into accurate, high-quality content.