Grammarly is an advanced, AI-powered tool that can assist writers in various ways, from simple spelling and grammar-checking to more significant stylistic suggestions. As influential as its suggestions can be, it makes sense to question whether Grammarly can be detected as AI.
More specifically, if you have a piece of writing that’s been heavily edited and revised based on Grammarly’s suggestions, is it more likely to show up as being AI when scanned with detection tools such as AI Detector?
The short answer is maybe. Although Grammarly does have a few features that may flag parts of your writing as AI, if you’re only using the grammar and spell-checking features, you’re most likely in the clear.
To help better understand Grammarly’s relationship with AI detectors, let’s explore the assistant a bit more as well as the nature of the detectors themselves.
Exploring the Technology Powering Grammarly and Its Features
Underpinning all of Grammarly’s features is a sophisticated AI system that leverages machine learning to analyze your writing and suggest areas for improvement, from simply fixing grammar and spelling to offering enhancements to tone and clarity. But what exactly is machine learning?
As the name implies, machine learning is the effort to create computers that learn much in the same way that people do, giving way to “artificial” intelligence. This process works by repeatedly feeding AI systems with data without the need for reprogramming the model every step of the way.
Though no AI model truly “understands” what it’s doing, it’s great at recognizing patterns. Where Grammarly is specifically concerned, its AI model is trained to recognize patterns in text and suggest improvements or fix grammar. Grammarly—or any AI for that matter—doesn’t “understand” grammar; it’s just learned to pick up on the patterns of good grammar based on the data that it’s processed.
Underpinning any machine learning system—like that used for Grammarly, AI detectors, or chatbots like ChatGPT—is a neural network. A neural network is a collection of simulated neurons (or nodes) that all work in concert to come up with some kind of output given the input. These networks are exceedingly good at processing information, although it’s important not to confuse them with human brains, which differ from neural networks in that human brains actually think.
Image credit: GeeksforGeeks
Neural networks are trained depending on what you want them to accomplish. In the case of Grammarly, its network was designed specifically for writing, especially by recognizing syntax, spelling, and tone. As you feed a piece of writing into the “input” layer of Grammarly’s neural network, each subsequent node weighs it for potential suggestions and improvements. Finally, at the “output” end, you receive the recommendations on what to change.
A Quick Explanation of AI Detectors
Much like Grammarly itself, AI detectors are built with the power of machine learning and neural networks. Only instead of being able to recognize the patterns distinct to good writing, the neural networks powering AI detectors are trained on what AI writing looks like.
In particular, two concepts are integral to understanding what makes AI writing different from “real” writing: burstiness and perplexity. Burstiness refers to the variance in sentence length and structure, whereas perplexity refers to how predictable and random individual word choices are.
As you might have guessed, AI writing has very little perplexity and burstiness, so AI detectors work by identifying these telltale signs. The less burstiness or perplexity a text has, the more likely it is for it to have been AI-written.
Because of their nature, AI detectors work best with generative AI systems, like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Copilot. These chatbots take whatever your prompt is to generate fully AI-written outputs. By comparison, Grammarly uses your writing as a base for everything it does, such as identifying errors and suggesting revisions. As such, AI detectors are less effective when used to detect Grammarly’s enhancements to your writing. However, as you’ll soon learn, a few of Grammarly’s powerful features might make your text more likely to be flagged as AI.
Now that we have a foundation of how AI detectors and tools like Grammarly work, let’s explore all that Grammarly can do and the likelihood that those changes this writing assistant suggests could be flagged as AI.
Which of Grammarly’s Features Could Be Detected as AI?
Although frequently thought of as a simple proofreading and editing tool, Grammarly has a surprising number of powerful features outside of that. As it stands now, here’s an overview of what the assistant is capable of doing and whether these features can be flagged as AI.
It’s also important to mention that while Grammarly’s proofreading feature can be used with a free account, the advanced features require a pro subscription. So, if you’re just using the free version to proofread your docs and emails, there’s little chance that the edits will be substantial enough to cause them to be flagged as AI.
However, where proofreading ends, an array of powerful features begins. Let’s explore them all in turn:
Proofreading
Grammarly’s proofreading feature offers fixes to grammar and spelling in case you’ve misspelled a word, misused a comma, or made various other writing errors.
These suggestions typically don’t greatly impact the overall structure or syntax of your sentences (although if you’ve made a major grammatical mistake, they can) so these minor suggestions will rarely be detected as AI when scanned.
Clarity
Grammarly’s ability to clarify writing involves rearranging words here, deleting them there, and ultimately working to make your writing clearer and more concise. While this feature can be great at improving flow and reducing wordiness, the changes are typically so minor that they’re unlikely to get flagged by AI detectors. These changes don’t often alter your word choices; instead, they simply rearrange sentences or delete words.
So, in most situations, you can use this feature without any worry.
Tone suggestions
From within Grammarly’s settings, you can select both formality and your desired tone. From there, the assistant will suggest changes to ensure that your writing aligns with your goal. These changes will typically be relatively minor, much like the clarity suggestions. Grammarly might suggest a slight rewrite or rearrangement of your sentences and offer different word choices. Typically, these changes aren’t extensive enough to be flagged as AI.
Paragraph rewrites
Grammarly will also allow you to take all of its suggestions and apply them with the click of a button. This will include any spelling and grammar fixes as well as clarity suggestions. While, depending on the number of issues in your text, these changes can be substantial, they usually won’t be detected as AI.
Strategic coaching and rewrites
This is where Grammarly’s suggestions potentially lead to your writing being flagged as AI, but only if you use them heavily. The assistant’s strategic coaching feature can enhance your paragraphs by inserting AI-written text to highlight or emphasize certain aspects of your writing.
Grammarly also has a similar rewriting function. With it, you can simply highlight a paragraph, and the assistant’s AI model will apply various improvements, potentially rewriting the entire paragraph to something the tool considers better and more effective.
Naturally, any writing generated by AI, be it Grammarly or ChatGPT, can potentially be detected as AI by tools like AI Detector as these tools work by being trained on what AI writing looks like. Thus, if you have any writing in your text that an AI model has generated, it’s more likely to get flagged.
For instance, take this paragraph from earlier in this article:
“Though no AI model truly ‘understands’ what it’s doing, it’s great at recognizing patterns. Where Grammarly is specifically concerned, its AI model is trained to recognize patterns in text and suggest improvements or fix grammar. Grammarly—or any AI for that matter—doesn’t ‘understand’ grammar; it’s just learned to pick up on the patterns of good grammar.”
If we take that paragraph and scan it with GPTZero, although any high-quality detector can be used, we’ll see that it shows almost no signs of being AI-written.
Image credit: GPTZero
Now, let’s take that paragraph and let Grammarly work a little magic on it to help increase that paragraph’s effectiveness—although we could argue how effectively the writing assistant has done this:
“It’s important to understand that AI, including Grammarly, doesn’t truly ‘understand’ grammar. Instead, it excels at recognizing patterns. Grammarly’s AI models are trained to identify patterns in text and suggest improvements or fix grammar. This knowledge should provide a sense of security, knowing that AI doesn’t ‘understand’ grammar in the same way humans do.”
While, in essence, the two paragraphs convey similar ideas, the revised one reads more as though AI has written it. So, how does it fare when we scan it with GPTZero?
Image credit: GPTZero
Despite the similarities between the two versions of that paragraph, GPTZero is reasonably sure that the Grammarly-enhanced version is AI-generated. Thus, if we’re asking whether Grammarly can be detected as AI, then specifically for any enhancements or rewrites, AI detectors will likely pick up that your content has an AI influence.
Other Grammarly features
Outside these main features, Grammarly also has a lot of workflow and team-oriented benefits that can tweak your text in various ways for both emails and documents. While most of these wouldn’t leave a significant impact on detectors, by this point, we’ve also come up with a general rule of thumb for Grammarly or any other AI writing assistant, as follows:
If Grammarly isn’t changing the core of what you said—as in the words themselves—you most likely don’t need to worry much. If all it’s doing is fixing grammar, changing some syntax for flow and clarity, or making some slight tweaks to your word choice, then it’s unlikely an AI detector will be triggered.
However, if you’re using Grammarly to majorly rewrite or add new content to your writing, then there’s a high likelihood that the result will be flagged as AI by the best AI detectors out there. When done with a little discretion, using the tool on only a paragraph or two, these changes won’t significantly impact your text. But if you leverage Grammarly across most of your writing, it might have more of an impact and potentially lead to your entire document being flagged as AI.
Final Words – Why Even Worry About AI Detection?
If you’ve made it this far and are scratching your head as to why you’d be worried about whether Grammarly’s edits can get flagged as AI, then it’s important to briefly discuss the implications.
The most obvious of these is Grammarly’s use in an educational setting. As unfair as it might be, student writing has far more scrutiny placed on them than that of most other people, professional or otherwise—all because of the few bad apples who turn to academic dishonesty and cheating.
Often, teachers rely on AI and plagiarism detectors to ensure that students aren’t cheating. So, it’s a fair concern for students to be worried about whether or not utilizing Grammarly for their essays and assignments might cause them to be accused of cheating, especially when they’ve spent hours and days working on a project.
Beyond that, people who write professionally (e.g. people involved with content creation or even those who write a lot of business correspondence) might have their reputations impacted by AI false positives—and we’d argue that AI detection caused by Grammarly would be akin to a false positive—so it’s good for professionals to be on the lookout for anything that might impact their writing.
The good news is that using Grammarly for simple grammar and spelling fixes and improvements is unlikely to move the needle of any AI detector too much out of the green. However, using this assistant to rewrite large portions of your text might lead to those parts of your text being seemingly more “AI-written.”
If you’re worried about whether Grammarly has led to your text having more of an AI influence, then the best course of action is to use a high-quality tool, like AI Detector, to scan for signs of AI. A detector will highlight what parts of your writing show signs of AI, and then you can rewrite them to ensure they read naturally.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Grammarly generate new content?
Yes, although it uses your writing as the foundation of whatever it generates, Grammarly can, through its various powerful features, add new content to your writing. If you’re worried about the originality of this AI-generated text, then a good recommendation is to rewrite whatever it adds in your own words, using your own style.
Can Grammarly improve AI-generated content?
Yes, although it won’t be as effective as humanizing that AI content yourself, Grammarly is capable of taking AI-written text and rewriting it or changing it to fit your needs. You’ll still want to double-check those changes with a high-quality AI detector, but the results will typically be better than what Grammarly provides.
Will Grammarly be detected as AI if used heavily?
Yes, considering that you can use Grammarly to rewrite and enhance virtually every sentence of every paragraph, there’s a good chance that doing so will result in your content showing many signs of AI influence. So if you’re concerned about AI detection, use Grammarly’s more powerful features sparingly.
Is Grammarly a generative AI tool?
Yes, but not entirely. While generative AI is an integral part of Grammarly’s features, the assistant’s basic features, like proofreading and edits for clarity, rarely “generate” anything new; they simply remix and enhance what’s already been written. The more advanced features that either rewrite or add new content do use Grammarly’s generative features.
Can Grammarly’s AI understand what I’m trying to say?
Not exactly. Grammarly’s AI doesn’t “understand” your words in a human sense. Instead, it’s trained to spot patterns, grammar, and style—but the tool stops short of comprehension. The assistant works by comparing what you’ve written to countless examples in its training data. So, while it can make recommendations, it’s not “thinking” about what your message means—it’s just flagging patterns and best practices based on what it’s seen before.
Is every Grammarly suggestion accurate?
Grammarly’s pretty great at what it does, but it’s not perfect. Sometimes, it may misjudge context or miss the mark with tone, especially with more nuanced or unique writing styles. Its suggestions are rooted in language conventions, but it’s best to give each suggestion a critical look. AI can handle mechanics, but sometimes it misses the mark. So think of Grammarly as your editor—but with a few imperfections that only a human eye can catch.
