Honest Originality.ai Review: How To Detect AI Content With 99% Accuracy

I think you’ll agree with me when I say…

Spotting AI content online is getting harder and harder.

But our 2025 AI content detection case study proved that Originality.ai is the ONLY AI content detector tool that achieved a near-perfect 100% detection rate across all 14 AI writing tools we tested.

This includes:

And more!

This matters because Google hammered sites back in March 2024 for abusing AI content on their sites.

Many have never recovered, and some were even de-indexed completely.

If you pay writers or agencies to create content for your website – You need a proven tool to protect your site from AI-generated content.

In this review of Originality.ai, I will show you exactly how the tool works, what makes it different from its competitors, and how to use it to protect your business.

Important Notice About AI Content

Let me be clear…

Many people point to Google’s statement that:

“appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines.”

But the question is – Are you ready to bet your entire business on that?

Google already went out of their way to penalise sites for abusing AI-generated content back in the March 2024 Core Update.

Plus, the Google Search Leak, DOJ Anti-trust case and our own SEO Myths case study show that Google has a history of inconsistent statements vs actions.

That’s why I always say – Take what Google says with a grain of salt.

Our comprehensive AI content detection testing also proves that publicly available tools can easily detect AI content. If we can do it with these tools, there is no doubt that Google certainly can do it too.

As SEOs, there has been a clear pattern over the last 2 decades:

AI is following this exact trajectory…

I’ve had 3 recent consultations where agencies are using ChatGPT to publish medical advice along with specific drug and dosage recommendations on their clients’ blogs with zero oversight.

In every case, the agency had not informed their medical-based clients that they were using AI to create the content.

Disgusting, immoral and unethical.

That poses a HUGE risk for each of the clients!

My main point is this:

Using AI-generated content on your site presents a serious risk that could cripple your SEO whenever Google decides to flip their stance.

That’s not a risk I’m willing to take.

With all that in mind, let’s get into the Originality AI review…

What Is Originality.ai?

Originality.ai is a powerful AI content detector and plagiarism checker tool that was developed by Jon Gillham in November 2022.

Unlike other basic AI detection tools, Originality has developed its own model trained on millions of documents to achieve 99%+ AI detection accuracy.

It also has a powerful plagiarism checker that takes into account nuanced or slight changes in copied work.

Combining AI detection and plagiarism features has meant that Originality AI has become the market leader in catching AI-generated content.

But that’s not all…

Originality offers an entire suite of content verification tools:

The best part is that even their base monthly plan comes with all these powerful features. And the accuracy is the best on the market!

Here’s a comparison of how Originality compares to other leading competitors:

Put simply – Originality.ai is the most accurate tool to ensure that no AI-generated or plagiarised content ever makes it to your site.

It has everything you need to protect yourself and your business.

Originality.ai Pros & Cons

Use these pros and cons to help decide if Originality is right for you.

📋 Originality.ai Pros: What I Think You’ll Like

📋 Originality.ai Cons: What I Think You’ll Dislike

What Makes Originality Different?

Originality has the most developed suite of content detection features of any tool we’ve tested.

But 3 core features make it stand out from competitors.

#1: Superior Detection Accuracy

Originality.ai has the highest AI content detection accuracy in the industry.

In our comprehensive 2025 testing, Originality.ai was the ONLY tool to achieve a near-perfect 100% detection rate across all 14 AI writing tools.

This included detecting some of the top AI writers and models available at the moment.

#2: Detects Humanised AI Content

Originality essentially eliminated AI content humanisers altogether.

Lots of writers use humanisers and paraphrases to beat detection. But Originality has trained its detection model to think like a humaniser tool.

That means even “humanised” AI content is picked up.

#3: Complete Integrated Content Tool Suite

Detection is just one aspect of AI content.

What if the content-

Originality.ai includes a complete suite of content tools to ensure that the content you publish on your site is accurate, unique and not plagiarised.

You can even use the Site Scan feature to check your entire website for any published AI content at scale.

How To Start Using Originality.ai

Ready to start using Originality to protect your site?

It takes less than 5 minutes to get started.

Follow these steps:

Head over to Originality.ai, click “Sign up”, add your email and create a secure password.

Next, Originality will send you a verification email.

Click the “Confirm Email” button to verify your email and activate your account.

Now, you need to select your plan:

If you want to try out Originality, I recommend a pay-as-you-go plan, which will give you 3,000 credits for $30. Credits expire after 2 years.

Click “Balance” in the top right and fill in the payment details.

Scanning content is easy.

On the left, click “Content Scan”, then select “Start New Scan”.

There are a few settings here that are worth going over…

Firstly, the models. Originality.ai has two primary models:

1. Lite – Up to 98% accuracy, far fewer false positives.
2. Turbo – Up to 99%+ accuracy, more sensitive, may have more false positives.

Choose Lite to start with and select the rest of the checkers-

Now, paste the content into the editor or import the content directly from a URL or file.

Down the bottom, you will see the yellow “Scan” button light up and an estimate of how many credits you’ll use.

When ready, click “Scan”, and Originality will begin analysing the content.

It should take less than 15 seconds total, depending on the amount of content that needs to be scanned.

Easy, right?

The results will appear at the top and on the right like this:

All your content scans are saved in the “My Content Scans” section of the dashboard. You can access them anytime.

How To Use Originality.ai

Originality has a simple and easy-to-use interface.

In this next section, I’ll explain how each core feature works and how you can use them yourself.

Understanding The Dashboard

When you log in to Originality, you’ll be greeted by the dashboard.

It’s broken into two sections:

1. Recent pages
2. Recent stats

The recent pages section provides quick navigation to the tools and features that you’re using most.

This makes it super easy to get where you want to be quickly.

Down the bottom of the dashboard, you’ll find your key stats and the recent scans you’ve done.

This is a good overview of how many credits you’ve used and the words you scanned last week.

I also like that your most recent scans are displayed in the dashboard. It’s efficient to jump back in and pick up where you left off.

On the left side of the screen is the navigation.

One great thing I like about Originality is the simplicity of the application.

You can navigate to any feature in under two clicks!

AI Content Detection

Orginality’s AI checker works by looking for common patterns that AI writers use and predicting the next most likely word the AI model would choose.

It’s been trained on millions of documents and continues to be updated and refined as new models are released.

The best part?

Checking for AI content is easy with Originality.

You have two primary tools:

1. Content Scanner – Individual documents or pieces of content
2. Website Scanner – Scan all the content on your entire site

For most users, the Content Scanner is where you will spend most of your time.

Here’s how it works:

Copy and paste your content into the Originality.ai editor and select the “AI Check” button.

You can also import the content by file (PDF, doc) or by pasting a live website URL.

Hit “Scan”.

It takes less than 3 seconds for Originality to scan about 1,000 words, which is very fast.

Originality provides an overall score and a complete breakdown of all your content, sentence by sentence.

Everything is colour-coded based on the level of confidence Originality has about the content being human-written.

This is the colour-code system:

• Red – 90% confidence AI content
• Orange– 70% confidence AI content
• Yellow – 50% confidence AI content
• Light Green – 70% confidence Human content
• Dark Green – 90% confidence Human content

The report is far more in-depth than all the other AI content detectors I’ve used. You can literally go line by line to see what content is likely AI-written and what isn’t.

This level of insight is exactly what website owners need when working with writers. It ensures that even writers editing AI content can’t beat the system!

Note: The less content the AI Checker has, the less accurate it is.

Unless Originality flags an individual sentence at 70% AI content or higher, it’s not something I would worry too much about.

So, take the line-by-line analysis with a pinch of salt.

Focus on the overall confidence score that Originality provides and look for large sections of content flagged as AI.

The Originality AI detection tools work as you would expect! It’s a quick, flexible process you can easily integrate into your current editorial process!

The only thing to keep in mind is that single scans are limited to 4,000 words. While this will be okay for most users, it will restrict you from scanning large posts or long-form content.

Plagiarism Checking

Another core feature of Originality.ai is plagiarism checking.

It has up to a 90% accuracy rating for plagiarism worldwide, beating out major competitors like Copyscape and Grammarly.

Here’s how it works:

Inside the content scanner, select the “Plagiarism Check” button. Run the scan with just the plagiarism check, or combine it with an AI scan as well.

It takes about 10 seconds to scan 1,000 words for plagiarised content.

At the top, you’ll see the overall plagiarism match rate.

On the side, you get more detailed metrics:

I really like that Originality highlights the exact phrases or words plagiarised from the original content.

It works perfectly to vet a writer’s work before publishing the content to your site.

Chrome Extension

Install the Originality.ai Chrome Extension from the Chrome web store.

Have your writers write their content on a Google Doc. When you load a Google Doc, there will now be an Originality.ai report button.

Click that button, and Originality will review the change log for the Google Doc.

After running the scan, you’ll have access to two reports:

1. AI Detection Report – Get a complete scan of whether the content is likely AI or human-written.
2. Document History Report – View the complete revision history change log of the document and watch the changes in real-time, character-by-character.

The document history report is cool.

You can literally see how the content was written word by word, sentence by sentence. It’s like watching a video replay of the writer typing.

If there are any large chunks of text pasted into the document, they will be highlighted in green on the document.

I like this feature because it protects you and the writer!

If Originality gives a false positive, you can check the document history report to verify how the content was written.

Doesn’t get much more transparent than that, right?

It also gives you the tools needed to manage writers remotely, ensuring they’re actually writing the content themselves.

Aside from this core feature, the Originality Chrome Extension allows you to check for AI content while you browse.

Highlight text on the web page, right-click and select “Scan” with Originality.ai.

Originality will scan the text with all the scan types (AI, Plagiarism, Fact, Readability, etc.) and provide a report directly on the left in Google Chrome.

This makes it super easy to check AI content on any site, at any time, without needing to log into the Originality dashboard.

Integration With Other Tools

For businesses with large teams, Originality.ai has a bunch of features that ensure it plays nicely with your current tech stack and team management systems.

These options include:

The team management features that Originality created stand out here…

There are three levels of permission:

1. Editor – Run and view their own scans
2. Manager – Run, view, manage and delete any scans
3. Admin – Access to the entire account, including API and billing

What’s more?

Originality has a “Member Activity Feed feature”.

This allows admins to review any changes or activity made by any team member.

I was not expecting this level of team management features in Originality.

Some of the tools are close to enterprise level!

Its robust suite of features will ensure you can manage your team properly while integrating Originality with any other software you currently use.

Accuracy Testing: Our 2025 Case Study Results

In March 2025, we conducted our own AI content detection test to see if AI content could be detected by publicly available tools.

To ensure quality results:

The test included all the latest models like GPT-4o, Claude Sonnet 3.5, Gemini Flash 2.0 and DeepSeek R1.

We also included 5 of my own human-written articles as a control group to see if the AI detection tools could tell the difference.

The results were definitive…

Here are the highlights:

• Originality.ai detected 100% of all AI-generated content across every AI writing tool
• No AI content generator or writer consistently passed detection
• Even the most advanced AI models were instantly caught out
• Human-written content was correctly labelled by most detectors

I recommend you read the entire case study here to see the full results.

But the biggest surprise was how advanced AI detection has become over the last couple of years.

In 2023, we ran a similar test, and there were a number of AI generation tools that could consistently avoid detection.

Not anymore…

The detection technology has not only caught up, but evolved faster than AI generation models.

There were numerous AI detectors that could easily detect AI content, with Originality leading the pack by a long way.

AI Detection Engines Comparison

Here is a comparison of the top AI detectors from our test:

While Originality AI did have the highest false positive rate (incorrectly flagging human content as AI generated), its near-perfect detection rate makes it the most reliable tool overall.

The truth is that it’s better to have the occasional false positive than to miss AI content entirely.

Do Content Humanisers Beat Originality.ai?

Originality has developed its AI model to account for potential humanised content.

Let me show you what I mean…

Here is some AI content that I ran through Originality:

It is immediately flagged as 100% AI content by Originality.

So, I put it through a humaniser tool to see if it can get past Originality.

This is how it reads after humanising it:

The result is that Originality still flags the humanised content as 100% AI.

Not only that…

The humanised content reads badly. The humaniser essentially adds a bunch of unnatural human words and phrases to trick the detector.

And it doesn’t even work.

The fundamental truth remains the same:

Content written by a machine can be detected by a machine.

That’s not going to change anytime soon!

Originality Pricing

Originality offers three different pricing plans:

You can save 23% on the Pro and Enterprise plans by opting for the annual subscription.

1 credit = 100 words scanned.

That means with 3,000 credits, you can scan up to 300,000 words. That’s a lot and is more than enough for most users to get started.

Compared to competitors like Sapling and Copyleaks – Originality.ai costs about the same when you break it down by cost per 100 words.

In saying that, it’s definitely on the more premium end.

Considering the features and technology you get access to, I think the pricing offers excellent value for money.

And comparing Originality against cheaper AI detector tools proves that Originality’s accuracy is unmatched.

That’s why I will continue to use Originality going forward!

Overall, I like the plans that Originality has put together.

There is something for everyone, whether you’re a small business, a large organisation or just want to try out the features.

Recommended Uses For AI Content Tools

I’m not against AI tools.

Generative AI is an incredible and valuable technology when used correctly.

AI generators are great for-

…For human writers.

From my own AI testing, it’s clear that the best AI SEO tools can come up with excellent ideas and fresh angles for content creation.

But when it comes to writing content for your site – Run the other way!

Publishing raw or even humanised AI content represents a significant risk for your SEO and business. It’s just not worth it!

That’s why Originality.ai is so essential…

If it can detect AI in your content, Google almost certainly can too. Better to catch these issues before publishing than face potential penalties later.

I can’t emphasise this enough:

If you work with freelance, agency or any third-party writers, you need to have a reliable tool like Originality.ai to protect yourself.

The last thing you want is to have the AI content published without your knowledge, only to find out when it’s too late!

Wrapping It Up

Here are my final thoughts…

Originality.ai is hands down the best AI content detector on the market right now.

Our testing proves it:

100% detection rate across all 14 AI writing tools, including the most advanced generative AI models.

It doesn’t get any better than that!

The best part is that Originality’s AI detection models work really well!

While it’s not perfect, the complete suite of features makes Originality the only comprehensive content suite to protect your site.

And they continue improving and updating their detection as new AI models emerge.

The truth is that if you pay anyone to create content for your website, Originality.ai isn’t just a nice to have…

… It’s a must!

Protect your website, SEO and business from AI content with a tool you can actually depend on.

Sign up for Originality here.