“ChatGPT, it changed the game,” recognizes Lucile Guillermin, Compilatio’s marketing manager for seven years. This company, created in 2005 in Annecy, specializes in the fight against plagiarism. She is even considered an “expert in academic integrity” by her 800 clients, mainly universities – both private and public – in France and in “40 countries around the world”.
“From the beginning of the year, we understood the panic of the faculties faced with the use of ChatGPT by students for their homework and above all, faced with the speed at which this technology has spread, recalls the representative of the box. We too were disconcerted by the quality of the productions produced. Universities then turned to us to find out how Compilatio could respond to this new way of cheating. »
A 90% reliable tool for now
Quickly, the Annecy teams mobilized and released a first version. This “beta” edition is already able to detect whether a text is generated by an artificial intelligence or a human. The length of words, the use of certain terms or their repetition, but also spelling mistakes and notions of predictability are ways to recognize the leg of a robot, according to the expert in the field. In other words, difficult to tell the difference with the style of a human being.
“To improve our demonstrator, it is freely available on our site. We want to test the algorithm as much as possible to prove that it is 100% reliable, adds Lucile Guillermin. The more he is trained, the more he learns. Currently, the “IA Detector Evaluation” is 90% reliable against all versions of ChatGPT (3, 3.5 and 4) and can analyze up to 2,000 characters. “Eventually, it must be able to examine a document in its entirety and give the percentage of content written by an AI. “This version could be available” before the end of the semester “, provides the company without advancing too much. She wants to deliver a “perfect” product.
Soon, software for the publishing world
But the response to this new technology should not be limited to “catching cheaters” or banning its use. “In any case, we won’t be able to do it,” says the marketing manager.
Before adding: “We cannot play the game of cat and mouse indefinitely. As to fight against plagiarism when the copy / paste of the Internet has developed, we must learn to use these new tools at our disposal. We must lay down the regulatory framework, define what is authorized or not and the sanctions that go with these rules. Then, train and support teachers and students on how to use artificial intelligence. Without “taking as absolute truth” what ChatGPT says, the expert in the field recognizes “the gain in productivity” that it allows. According to her, it will be part of the “skills to be acquired” in the future.
After the university sector, Compilatio wants to tackle that of publishing and journalism. As for the universities, it now offers a “Copyright” tool to verify the authenticity of the writings sent and to fight against plagiarism. Lucile Guillermin specifies: “The new challenge for the company is now to develop another system to ensure that manuscripts and texts are indeed written by humans. In the meantime, we promise, this article was not written by an AI…