THE AI MIMIC SYNDROME.
I have a problem. Well, actually, I had, thanks to a fellow medium author who helped me spot the causes in a discord community.
It's very infuriating when your hard work gets flagged down because it doesn't look original.
I'm sure this syndrome persisted long enough until a Reddit user and also an author here on Medium did the final call-out. I was more than convinced but at the same time confused because I wasn't an AI, so why are my works being perceived as AI-generated?
WHAT IS THE AI MIMIC SYNDROME?
First, it's only fair to explain what AI Mimic Syndrome is all about before getting into the rest of the details.
The AI Mimic Syndrome, which has been my frustration for years, is a situation where your original work mimics the structure of an AI output and an AI detector flags it down as AI-generated. Your work stands no chance with editors, either.
WHY I HAD TO DIAGNOSE MYSELF.
Have you ever popped into your friends group chat and they asked you when you got an automation installed simply because your text looked like something a large language model would write?
I've been asked more than twice, but I still didn't recognize it as a problem. At least not until my recent work.
I was creating a summary, and I just decided to plop it into an AI detector just to be sure, only to be met with ‘100% AI generated’. After five good revisions, it said exactly the same thing.
Then I knew this could be more threatening than I actually thought.
I'm a non-native English speaker, so definitely the pressure of understanding and using ‘perfect’ English is on.
THE CAUSE REVEALED.
I sought help in a discord community, and a potential cause was revealed.
“Apparently, AI detectors only ‘detect’ similarities between the patterns of AI content and human content. One of the biggest flags of AI content is sentence structure. Basically, AI likes to use a bajillion phrases and clauses in one sentence.”
My sentences were guilty as charged.
All I needed to do was make my sentences shorter and clearer. Sentences should contain no more than three clauses or phrases. And I should try to aim for a maximum sentence length of 14 words.
LET’S COMPARE THE SENTENCES.
This was my original piece that got flagged as AI generation:
With nowhere to go and little to survive on, Jackie held her brother in hand, rummaging across rivers, plains, towns, and cities in search of the legendary city of wealth, where dreams are fabled to come true.
Follow Jackie on her journey of resilience to ignite your determination and fuel your passion.
This was the revision example given to me on Discord:
“She had nowhere to go and little to survive on. Having heard of a legendary city of wealth, she decided to go in search of it.
Follow Jackie’s journey across various cities and treacherous landscapes, all while fighting for the survival of her and her brother.”
I made a little twist and went with this piece:
She had nowhere to go and little to survive on. A legendary city of wealth was her only resort, and she decided to go in search of it.
Follow Jackie’s journey across various cities and treacherous landscapes, all while fighting for the survival of her and her brother.”
When I plopped it into an AI detector, it came out as human-written, which solved, if not 100%, at least 99% of my problems.
FINAL THOUGHTS.
I know that non-native English speakers are often shy about discussing their English problems. Most times, we just want to believe we can hide the flaws in our sentences.
I decided to put this out here for anyone who might need it. We learn and improve every day.
The last piece of advice I got was: “You’ve got this! Just write the way you’d explain it to a friend. That’s always helped me a lot 🙂”.
I hope this can help you also, one way or the other.
