OpenAI’s tool, AI Classifier, which the company had launched at the beginning of the year to help users detect AI-generated content, has been quietly shut down due to its low accuracy. The company revealed this by updating the original launch post for AI Classifier.
“As of July 20, 2023, the AI classifier is no longer available due to its low rate of accuracy. We are working to incorporate feedback and are currently researching more effective provenance techniques for text, and have made a commitment to develop and deploy mechanisms that enable users to understand if audio or visual content is AI-generated,” noted the update by OpenAI, without sharing the specifics of low rate of accuracy or details about the feedback.
The page for the tool on OpenAI’s website returns a “Page Not Found” error. The classifier was not a very confident launch by the company to begin with. OpenAI had clearly said that it was not fully reliable in its launch announcement.
The company had claimed that the tool could identify 26 percent of AI-written text as likely AI-written (true positives) while incorrectly labeling human-written texts as AI-written 9 percent of the time (false positives).
OpenAI had made the tool publicly available to gather feedback on whether “imperfect tools” like it could be useful. However, they probably realized very quickly that it was not the case.
This is one of the first notable tools being discontinued by the company, but given the pace at which OpenAI is moving, we can expect many other products to meet a similar fate. However, that may not be a bad thing after all.
