Grammarly is a popular writing and editing tool used by writers, students, and professionals. So, if you write or edit regularly, chances are you’ve heard of or used Grammarly.
It goes far beyond the typical spelling and grammar checks of many word-processing programs. Grammarly also uses generative AI (in certain features) to suggest recommendations, with the aim of making writing clearer and easier to understand.
Then, in addition to Grammarly's use of generative AI to enhance its features, it also offers a plagiarism checker within its suite of tools.
Considering that the platform uses AI for ‘Rewrite’ or ‘Rephrase’ features, you may be wondering — does Grammarly detect AI and plagiarism? In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how Grammarly works and how it compares to Originality.ai when detecting plagiarism and AI writing.
What Is Grammarly and What Are Its Features?
According to Crunchbase, Grammarly was launched in 2009. Initially, its primary focus was a spelling and grammar checker for academia and students. Since then, it has quickly become a must-have editing tool for professionals that includes a suite of features such as:
- A paraphrasing tool
- Citation generator
- Tone detector
- Plagiarism checker
- A selection of AI writing tools
With app and browser extensions, it’s accessible just about anywhere you want to write.
One of the platform’s hallmark features is its ability to check grammar and spelling in real time. While you’re typing, Grammarly works in the background, catching grammatical errors, misspellings, punctuation problems, and much more.
It provides detailed tips, suggestions, and recommendations for clarity, even offering to “Rewrite” the content to match a specific tone or style. This type of in-depth checking process is part of why the platform is so popular.
Does Grammarly detect AI and plagiarism?
It’s no secret that for Grammarly, generative AI is part of its features. However, while it does offer a plagiarism checker, it hasn’t yet released any details about providing AI detection.
So, no — Grammarly does not yet detect AI and plagiarism — it only offers plagiarism detection.
Grammarly Generative AI Writing
Although Grammarly is incredibly popular for improving things like grammar, spelling and clarity, it surprisingly doesn’t have a dedicated feature specifically for detecting AI writing.
The platform’s main focus is helping to improve writing, and uses Grammarly generative AI in the same vein to make suggestions, recommendations and at times, rewrites.
In one of Grammarly’s Common Question guides, they note that ‘foundational AI technology’ is integrated into the platform and doesn’t impact original human writing. Then, since the initial adoption of AI, they have expanded to include generative AI, “In 2023, Grammarly introduced optional generative AI features that enable users to produce new content based on their inputs or prompts.”
So, Grammarly's generative AI is incorporated into the technology with the aim of going beyond ordinary spelling and grammar checkers. For example, it might flag text that reads as overly formal, repetitive, or lacking in voice and offer the option to generate or ‘produce new content’ based on this.
When using generative AI with Grammarly, it’s possible that the newly rewritten or rephrased text will trigger AI detection.
However, features like spelling and grammar checks aren’t necessarily considered AI writing to AI detectors (though this can vary by model and product). Originality.ai’s newly released 1.0.0 Lite AI detector model allows for light AI editing, like spelling and grammar suggestions.
Grammarly and Plagiarism Detection
Grammarly’s plagiarism checker is incredibly valuable. It works by scanning your text against everything from billions of web pages to academic databases (ProQuest). It looks for matches between the submitted text and highlights them as duplicate content.
Citation features with plagiarism detection
Depending on the pricing plan, it also offers citation suggestions to help you avoid plagiarism. One of the key hallmarks of plagiarism is copying someone else’s content without proper attribution.
Grammarly suggests citations according to the most commonly used citation methods, such as APA or MLA, making it an incredibly helpful resource for students and professionals alike who need to adhere to strict academic or publishing standards.
- Benefits for students: having access to proper citation guidelines can serve as an excellent refresher before turning in an essay.
- Perks for educators: the ability to see the sources that Grammarly highlights as potential plagiarism, allows for additional human reviews.
The free version of their plagiarism tool is available on their website. Then, for additional features like recommendations on citing source material, Premium options are available.
Despite accessing and crawling through such a massive database to find matches, the plagiarism detection process typically only takes a few minutes.
Keep in mind that there's always a chance of false positives. False positives can occur if your content uses common phrases or widely cited quotations. For this reason, it’s always a good idea to have a “human-in-the-loop” to verify potential instances of plagiarism.
Comparison: Originality.ai Offers AI and Plagiarism Detection
Although AI detection isn’t yet a part of Grammarly’s suite of features, it is possible to check for AI content and plagiarism at the same time with Originality.ai.
Originality.ai has features specifically designed to identify AI-generated content with Content Scans and Site Scans (that detect AI content across your website with 1-click). This makes it a top choice for anyone who wants to accurately distinguish between human and AI writing.
Plagiarism is incorporated into content scanning at Originality.ai. As part of the Pay-As-You-Go pricing, you can scan copy for AI-generated content and plagiarism simultaneously. Originality.ai also offers the benefit of looking for multiple types of plagiarism such as complete plagiarism and patchwork plagiarism.
When a scan is complete, you’ll get a detailed report that highlights any matched content or potential AI writing.
Then, it’s a good idea to review the highlighted sections and view the sources to better understand why the system flagged that particular passage or quote. This also gives you the freedom to decide if the content needs to be revised or if the platform is simply flagging a properly cited work.
Keeping track of these reports over time can also help you identify recurring issues and improve your writing practices overall.
Final Thoughts
Although Grammarly excels at suggesting improvements to help with clarity and provides a plagiarism-checking tool, it lacks the specialization needed to flag AI-written text with accuracy.
So, if you’re looking for combined AI and plagiarism detection Originality.ai offers exceptional capabilities for producing content that’s as unique and original as possible.
This two-pronged approach helps you to catch plagiarism and any AI-written content that might not be immediately obvious — after all, humans aren’t quite as good as they think they are at identifying ChatGPT content.
Ready to get started? Try Originality.ai today to start taking advantage of plagiarism detection and generative AI writing detection.
Further Reading on Grammarly
- Does Using Grammarly Make My Content Get Detected as AI-Generated?
- Grammarly Readability Score Review
- Grammarly AI Review
- Grammarly Plagiarism Checker Review
- Can Grammarly Detect AI Writing?
