Can you avoid AI detection through editing?

These days, AI writing tools are everywhere. They’re built into your email client, your chrome extensions, even your phone keyboard! At Pangram, we’re not inherently against using AI to write or help you write. There are plenty of scenarios where the eloquence, tone, and speed of an LLM is valuable enough that AI assistance is a net positive.

But of course, there are certain contexts where AI should not be used for writing. Personal or heartfelt notes, important legal documents, or work that will be submitted as part of an educational assignment should come entirely from your brain. Of course, the temptation remains. It’s easy to think that you can take an AI output, edit it a little bit, maybe plug it into an AI detector once or twice, and that will keep you safe in these high-stakes environments.

However in practice, trying to “edit your way out” of being detected is ineffective, time-consuming, and ends up being more work than writing from scratch. Believe us: we’ve heard time and again from users who sign up for Pangram for this particular use-case, only to end up tired, frustrated, and having spent more time than they’d like trying to fool the detector.

In this blog post, we’ll demonstrate how and why Pangram continues to detect AI even after rewording, editing, and rephrasing text from an AI. Finally, we’ll share the secret to guaranteeing a “human” result from Pangram. (Spoiler alert: it involves writing your entire document from scratch)

The promise of “editing AI text”

Many people believe that fooling a detector is a simple task. They believe that as soon as you swap a few words, you’ve added the “magical human touch” that will change the detector’s designation. However, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how modern, high-quality AI detectors work. Pangram is a deep-learning-based sequence classifier trained on millions of human and AI documents. The manner in which we train Pangram means it is sensitive to thousands of tiny signals about a particular text, from the frequency of certain words and phrases, to the structure and composition of sentences, to the overall organization and tone of the document. Each of these little signals are used in ensemble to create a prediction about a text. By editing a document, you may believe you are disrupting these signals. But more often than not, enough remain so that Pangram can still reliably detect it. Often, the misconception lies exactly here: Pangram is not just scanning the particular words you submit to the detector, but also the arguments, the structure, and organization of the piece. Ultimately, these higher-order features are the ones hardest to remove through quick editing and paraphrasing. To meaningfully change any of these aspects of a given document would require a full rewriting of the document. At that point, it becomes easier to just write your documents the right way from the outset.

Still don’t believe us? Let’s try some examples together!

Attempts to edit text to make it "human"

I asked GPT-5-Thinking to write me an essay about Jurassic Park. Here’s what it wrote:

Jurassic Park, directed by Steven Spielberg and released in 1993, remains one of the most iconic films in cinematic history. Based on Michael Crichton’s novel, the story imagines what would happen if scientists succeeded in resurrecting dinosaurs using preserved DNA. Wealthy entrepreneur John Hammond builds a futuristic theme park to showcase these creatures, but what begins as a scientific triumph quickly unravels into chaos when nature proves impossible to control. At its core, Jurassic Park is not only an action-packed adventure but also a cautionary tale about human ambition. The film explores themes of scientific hubris, the unpredictability of nature, and the ethical limits of technological progress. Characters like Dr. Ian Malcolm famously remind the audience that just because something can be done, doesn’t mean it should be. This tension between innovation and responsibility has made the story resonate far beyond its special effects. Equally important is the film’s groundbreaking use of computer-generated imagery and animatronics, which brought dinosaurs to life in ways never seen before. These visual achievements set new industry standards and inspired a generation of filmmakers. Ultimately, Jurassic Park endures not only as thrilling entertainment but as a reminder of humanity’s fragile place within the natural world.

Of course, this is easily picked up by Pangram as AI writing.

AI detected...

1. Removing common AI phrases

A common misconception that we hear that users try is to remove all of the AI phrases that Pangram highlights, hoping that will “remove the AI”. Let’s try that!

Jurassic Park, directed by Steven Spielberg and released in 1993, is still one of the biggest and most iconic films in the history of cinema. Based on Michael Crichton’s novel, the story imagines what would happen if scientists succeeded in resurrecting dinosaurs using preserved DNA. Wealthy entrepreneur John Hammond builds a futuristic theme park to highlight these creatures, but what begins as a scientific triumph quickly unravels into chaos when nature proves impossible to control. Fundamentally, Jurassic Park is not only an action-packed adventure but also a stark warning about human excess. The film explores themes of scientific hubris, the unpredictability of nature, and the ethical limits of technological progress. Characters like Dr. Ian Malcolm famously remind the audience that just because something can be done, doesn’t dictate it should be. This tension of human ingenuity and responsibility has made the story more impactful than just its special effects.

Equally important is the film’s groundbreaking use of computer-generated imagery and animatronics, which brought dinosaurs to the real world like never seen before. The stunning achievements set new industry standards and inspired a generation of filmmakers. Ultimately, Jurassic Park endures not only as thrilling entertainment but also a declaration of humanity’s brittle place within the universe.

The difference

Still caught! Still 99.9% Sure

Many people are confused why this doesn’t work, and it’s important to clear up! Pangram’s AI Phrases feature is what we call “post hoc”. This means that it was computed after the AI detection prediction. AI Phrases are visual callouts of phrases that appear much more often in AI-generated text than human text. However, they are not directly used by Pangram’s prediction model, and changing or reducing the number of them will not reduce your AI prediction.

2. Changing common words

But I get it– this is only a few words changed. Surely if we changed a few more, we’d fool Pangram’s prediction right? Let’s try it!

Jurassic Park, made by Steven Spielberg and first shown to audiences in 1993, is still one of the biggest and most iconic films in the history of cinema. Based on a super-cool novel written by Michael Crichton, the story imagines what would happen if scientists succeeded in remaking dinosaurs using preserved DNA. Wealthy entrepreneur John Hammond builds a wild and crazy future theme park to highlight these creatures, but what begins as a scientific triumph quickly unravels into chaos when nature proves impossible to control. Fundamentally, Jurassic Park is not just an action-packed adventure but also a really important about the fallacies of human excess. The film goes through a bunch of themes of scientific hubris, the real reality of nature, and the limits of technological progress. Characters like Dr. Ian Malcolm famously remind the audience that just because something can be done, doesn’t actually mean that it probably should be. This tension between the stretches of human ingenuity and depths of our responsibility have made the story far more impactful than just its special effects. Equally as important is the film’s really revolutionary use of CGI and animatronics, which brought dinosaurs to the real world like never seen before. The fascinating new achievement set the gold standard for visual effects and truly inspired a new generation of filmmakers. Ultimately, Jurassic Park is still famous all this years later as not only a thrilling piece of entertainment but also a declaration of humanity’s brittle and flismy place within the natural order.

More changes!

Still detected. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

3. Rewriting Sentences

Okay. You know what. It seems like this will take more effort. I’m going to rewrite a whole sentence from scratch. That way, an entire sentence was written by a human, and there’s no way Pangram will mark it as AI, right? Let’s try. I’ll fully rewrite the first sentence.

Jurassic Park, directed by Steven Spielberg and released in 1993, remains one of the most iconic films in cinematic history.

Now, will become:

Ever since its 1993 debut, the classic Steven Spielberg film Jurassic Park has been referred to as one of the most celebrated achievements in movie history.

I wrote that from scratch. And I’m a human! Certainly this won’t trigger the Pangram detector!

Noooooo 😭😭😭😭

I have an idea! Let me add my fully rewritten sentence to my mostly rephrased document! At that point, it will be certainly human enough, right?

Still detected. 😠

At this point, you might continue to try to do this. You may rewrite more sentences, or try to rephrase harder. But even in this particular example, a majority of the words have been completely replaced from the original AI output. Clearly, this is evidence that Pangram is not directly analyzing the words that AI produces. Instead, it’s looking holistically at a variety of features from the structure, organization, and tone of a particular document.

Conclusion

In the end, there’s only one way to rid yourself of the thousands of tiny signals that tip off AI detectors like Pangram. That is: you must conceive of, sit down, and write out your own ideas from the ground up.

Here at Pangram, we’re not anti-AI. However, we do believe that human writing is important and valuable. What you have to say matters! But so does how you say it. Taking control of your entire writing process is the best way to stay sincere, personal, and professional. So next time you’re in a situation where AI detection may be used, think about writing it by yourself. :-]

Don't be this guy