Passed AI Review: An AI Detection Tool for Teachers & Educators

The widespread use of artificial intelligence has caused much concern in the academic world, especially among spreading misinformation, and malicious use.

The increasing adoption of AI by students in schools are going to disrupt the status quo so badly I don't think people fully realize it yet. It's so concerning, governments and regulatory bodies are recognizing the importance of establishing guidelines – especially in the EU.

AI writing tools such as ChatGPT are becoming more integrated within the educational world. Students use AI & have been getting away with it, while others have actually been falsely flagged by AI detection software. Neither of these are good things.

Educators take academic integrity extremely serious, especially at the university level, but seem to be struggling with everything going on in the tech world. I mean, ChatGPT came out in November. It's not even a year old yet!

While there are various AI detection tools that are meant to help educators catch students cheating by trying to detect AI writing, in this review we'll go over one of the more recent ones: Passed AI

Why Is AI Detection Now a Hot Topic?

The increasing use of AI writing tools over the last year have resulted in a HUGE wave of AI plagiarism/cheating among students. This unethical behavior undermines academic integrity and erodes trust in online learning environments, teachers might have to go back to pen and paper soon!

I seriously can't stress out how crazy the education world is going to go when all of this finally gets understood. The difference between AI detection and Plagiarism detection is one is definitive and literally shows you proof.

If you suspect someone cheated or used another source as inspiration for their article, plagiarism detectors will give you a direct source: this was copied from goldpenguin.org

That's not how AI detection works. Which brings me to my next point...

AI Detection is Not Definitive

Before I promote a useful product for helping assist AI-assisted student writing, I need to make it clear that these tools are NOT definitive. You cannot prove something was 100% written with AI, you'll really just get a prediction.

I mean think about it – AI creates things from what it was trained on. If you ask ChatGPT the same question 10 times, each time you'll get a variation (although some cases will vary more slightly than others). That's what AI detection is, it works by analyzing text patterns & variations to try and detect patterns similar to what AI would have written.

Just take it all with a grain of salt, test multiple samples of the same type of writing, and use more than 1 detector if you are really sure AI was used. Let's get into the actual review!

Passed AI Unbiased Review & Key Features

AI Detection and Plagiarism Checker

Passed AI offers two powerful detection tools: the AI Detector and Plagiarism Checker. It combines these both into a single tool for ease of use.

When it comes to detecting AI-generated content, Passed AI utilizes the very popular methods and systems from Originality AI. This AI detection tool boasts an impressive 99% accuracy rate on GPT-4, making it highly dependable. For more information, you can also check out our in-depth honest review of Originality AI.

Passed AI also features a handy plagiarism checker. Once you prepare your documents for scanning, you have the option to check for plagiarism. You can even turn off the AI detection tool and solely utilize the plagiarism checker if you prefer (but there's other tools that check plagiarism a lot better than this one.)

Or you could check both at once...

Both the AI detector and plagiarism checker generate a score ranging from 0 to 100% for each result. A higher score indicates a higher probability of AI-generated or plagiarized content. In the case of plagiarized content, Passed AI also provides information about the source website.

If you see a result that says "40% AI" it doesn't mean 40% of the article was written with AI. It means if you were to flip 10 coins to determine AI, 4 of the 10 times you'd likely result with AI content. Many teachers think a certain percentage of AI means that percentage of the article was written with AI, but that's a very misleading metric and is not true.

To test the tool, I asked ChatGPT 3.5 and ChatGPT-4 (in this order) to write about two different topics:

Passed AI successfully detected both texts as 100% AI and 0% Not AI. This means with upmost confidence, it believes each piece of text was definitively using AI. (100% is the only time a tool is positive, hence the 100).

I didn't have have to paste the entire page of writing for a 100% result to come back, which is awesome. I would recommend pasting the entire text of something just to be sure, but for this example, this is all we needed to do:

Next, I wanted to see if Passed AI could identify whether an article was original or taken from other websites (great for direct plagiarism detection). I used a 1,362-word article called The negative environmental effects of plastic shopping bags by Kelvin Chidi Ujeh from the IBA.

As expected, Passed AI scored it as 100% plagiarized, revealing that it was copied from the International Bar Association's website:

To make things even more interesting, I also tested a recently published blog post for both AI detection and plagiarism simultaneously. Passed AI detected it as 98% AI content (2% not AI) and 7% plagiarized (93% not plagiarized). It even highlighted the plagiarized portion and the website it was taken from. However, it didn't show the specific blog where the entire content originated from.

Out of curiosity, I also tested the same blog post using Copyscape Premium. Copyscape is persoanlly the best plagiarism software I've ever used, and it was able to detect writing as originating from the blog I found it on.

However, it failed to identify the plagiarized section and the source website. Copyscape focused solely on the entire content and didn't really care to go line by line.

Google Chrome Extension

Passed AI also offers a hassle-free Chrome Extension that allows you to use it on Google Docs and anywhere else across the web.

If you're a teacher, you can simply ask your students to submit their work via Google Docs and grant you access to edit those files. Once you have access, you can open the files and analyze them using Passed AI with just a single click. After a few seconds you'll get a comprehensive report. 

I analyzed the same content from ChatGPT-4 as well. As expected, it received an AI Score of 99.99%. It might make it easier to use the add-on if you're grading things directly from a browser. I wouldn't really take anything serious (and investigate further) unless it has a score above 70 or 80%.

AI Generated, Human-Edited Writing

I wanted to be a little bit more slick and took content written by ChatGPT and made some partial edits before running the analysis.

The result was a 95.44% AI Score, which is pretty impressive. Good to know you'll still get a pretty high detection rate even with edits. Rewritten AI content adds another level of difficulty in detection:

History Report

Passed AI includes a helpful reporting feature that provides a comprehensive history of the analyzed content.

In the report, you'll find various metrics to evaluate the writing process. One such metric is the Flow Score, which measures the natural flow of the writing. Any score from 0.5 to 1 suggests that the writing process is more natural (variation and creativity). In my example, the score is 0.0, suggesting that the content is highly likely to be AI-assisted.

This history report also includes the number of Actions, which indicates how many changes were made in the document during the writing process. The Total Duration represents the time spent making those changes. These metrics give you insights into the level of editing and revision involved in creating the content. Originality also has some useful visualization features to see how writing was constructed.

The report highlights Long Inserts, which are suspicious additions made to the document. As you scroll down the page, you'll find detailed information about these "long inserts." This allows you to examine specific sections of the content that might require closer attention. 

Document Audit

The Document Audit feature provides a user-friendly graphical representation of the timeline for changes made in the document.

It gives you a clear overview of when specific "inserts" were made and how long they lasted.

In addition to all of that, you can also track who made those changes, their individual sessions, and the precise start and end times for each session.

You can easily visualize the editing history of the document, enabling you to track the progression of revisions over time. It helps you understand the collaborative process and identify the contributions made by different people if using a single document.

Replay Tool

The Replay Tool is like a video player that lets you review every step and movement involved in creating a document. It gives you full control, allowing you to press play, stop, and start playing again whenever you need. This feature is incredibly useful as it enables you to closely examine the author's writing style and easily track any instances of unnatural copy-pasting. I'd argue it might be better than the actual AI detection...

The tool provides a dynamic and interactive way to analyze the content, giving you a deeper understanding of its creation. Whether you're looking to assess the flow of the text or identify any suspicious copy-pasting, this tool empowers you to do so with ease. It will retype the article in real time (sped up, of course!)

Passed AI Pricing

Passed AI recently made some changes to its subscription plan, making it more affordable for anyone interested in a premium plan. They offer a standard plan at $9.99 per month. You aren't tied to anything other than that!

With the Standard Plan, you get 200 credits per month, which is equivalent to $0.10 per credit. These credits are used for scans, whether it's for AI detection or plagiarism checking.

For every 100 words scanned, you will consume 1 credit. So, if you decide to utilize both AI detection and plagiarism checks simultaneously, it will require 2 credits per 100 words. While a very affordable tool, they seem to differentiate credits and membership. You pay a single price for the membership monthly, then buy credits based on how often you need to use the tool.

Regardless of price, one of the benefits of Passed AI is that your credits don't expire. If you don't fully use all your credits in a particular month, they roll over to the following month. Don't stress 🙂 

How to Add More Credits

To check your current credit balance, look at the top right corner of your dashboard. If you find yourself in need of additional credits, you can re-up your account fairly easy:

• 500 credits for $5, allowing you to scan up to 100,000 words
• 1000 credits for $10, allowing you scan up to 200,000 words
• 2000 credits for $20, allowing you to scan up to 400,000 words

While Passed AI does offer a 5-day free trial, it does require you to submit your card details. They do emphasize that if you happen to be unsatisfied with their product within the first 5 days, you can request a refund with no questions asked.

Passed AI Pros and Cons

My Honest Thoughts

Based on what I've seen so far, Passed AI proves to be a fairly powerful tool for AI detection and plagiarism checking.

Its ability to accurately identify both AI-generated and plagiarized content makes it a valuable resource for upholding academic integrity and ensuring originality in educational settings. Just keep in mind these results should be taken with a grain of salt & as one of many resources you should use to identify AI-written content.

It's also very likely to have some actual human-written, non-AI text to come back as partially AI-generated. So for the sake of innocent students, there are tons of factors that go into writing before it should be classified as illegitimate. It's a much better choice to let a student get away then to accuse innocent ones.

I also appreciate that the results obtained using the Chrome extension are consistent with those from the website. You really don't need to use the website when the extension is installed.

It's also worth noting that Passed AI seems to be more effective at detecting smaller portions of plagiarized content in older posts compared to recent ones. Regardless, the Document History Audit and Replay Tool features truly enhances the overall analysis and provides deeper insights for narrowing down on someones writing.

With its affordable pricing structure, Passed AI offers a cost-effective solution for AI detection and plagiarism checking. I think it provides a pretty good value for your investment considering its accuracy and features. Don't just take my word for it - take advantage of their 5-day free trial and see if it's a promising tool for you & your institution 🙂