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Can Employers Really Detect AI Generated Cover Letters? Here's the truth!

Unraveling the mystery: Debunking AI-generated cover letter detection myths and uncovering the facts

7 min read

The development of AI has made it possible to create and generate text effortlessly, even for something as important as your cover letter. As AI-generated text becomes more prevalent, it's natural to wonder if companies can detect whether you're using an AI writing service for your cover letter. This blog post is here to shed some light on the topic and inform you about the current state of AI-generated text detection.

A robot sitting at a keyboard and playing it

Researchers have been working on methods to detect AI-generated text, primarily focusing on identifying specific patterns or "signatures" within the text. Some detection techniques involve "watermarking" the AI-generated text to imprint specific patterns that can be recognized later.

However, recent research has shown that these detection methods might not be as reliable as previously thought.

One significant finding of the research is that "paraphrasing attacks" can break a wide range of AI-generated text detectors. In simple terms, a paraphrasing attack involves applying a "light paraphraser" on top of the AI generated text, which rephrases the text without changing its meaning. This can make it much more challenging to detect whether the text was generated by AI or written by a human.

The study also reveals a significant finding, which implies that when dealing with highly advanced language models, even the most effective detector can only achieve slightly better results than a random guess. This means that as AI generated text evolves and becomes more refined, the challenge of differentiating between human-written and AI created content grows increasingly complex.

Based on the findings of this research, it seems that detecting AI-generated text, such as cover letters created using an AI writing service, is not as reliable as one might think. The combination of paraphrasing attacks and the inherent limitations in achieving perfect detection make it challenging for companies to identify the use of AI generated cover letters.

Long story short: No, right now it is not possible for employers to detect AI generated cover letters!

Written by Timo Hillmann - Founder coverletter.app

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