Freshman and sophomore English teacher Mary Newman took a look at two news stories, one written by a human and one written by the AI ChatGPT, in an attempt to differentiate the stories.

“I’m going to feel so stupid if I’m wrong,” Newman said.

So how did she do?

First, Newman wondered if the quotes both stories used had been somewhat altered. 

“I am underlining things that people say like ‘like,’” she said. “These two quotes sound like someone talks. I’m curious to see if that is something that the AI would catch or not.” 

But the AI knew not to change the quotes. 

“Nope, it’s the same quote in both ones,” Newman said.

Newman was eventually able to notice a difference between the two.

“If you notice, it starts out with most of the quotes, like, the quote comes first and then who said it,” Newman said, pointing to the story written by a human.

But then she pointed at the ChatGPT story.

“The quotes have more of an introduction, so it has the beginning, the lead in, and then the quote and then the writer,” Newman said.

What struck Newman as the biggest difference was the quality.

“This is more of what I see in my students’ papers,” Newman said while pointing at the human story.

She then pointed at the ChatGPT story and said, “This seems the more educated paper.”

In less than four minutes, Newman was ready to make her final decision.

“If I was to get these and someone was to ask me, I would say this one was the chatbot one,” Newman said. 

She was correct.