How to Fix “AI Detected” Flags: A Step-by-Step Guide for Creators

Content creators, webmasters, marketers, and writers worry about AI detection. The issue with AI detection is not just that it occurs, but that it can occur in human-written content as well.

Sometimes, human-written content can naturally end up resembling AI if some of its phrases follow common AI sentence structures. AI detection can also occur if the word choice is similar to that of AI’s, which is pretty common.

Humanizing the content, on the other hand, can be frustrating, because AI detection doesn’t occur because of a single or a few writing patterns. It can occur due to a number of phrases, sentence constructions, word choices, or patterns. AI detection tools are trained to identify these flags and flag the content as potentially AI-generated, which raises suspicion about the origin of the content.

The solution is to humanize the content; identify common flags and fix them by rewriting and editing the text, as discussed below.

In this article, we’ll learn how to humanize common AI patterns flagged by AI detection tools to lower detection scores.

What Are AI-Detected Flags?

AI-detected flags are patterns that an AI detection tool detects in a piece of text. There are many detectable patterns common in AI writing, such as:

• Word choices, like “rhythm” and “driven”

• Robotic sentence constructions, like “whether… or…”

• Robotic word pairs, like “crucial role”

• Mid-length sentences

• Softening words, mostly hedgers/diminishers like “probably” and “likely”

• Lack of contractions

• Compound adjectives, like “emotion-driven”

These patterns are almost always flagged in detectors, especially if they’re more than a few of them together. But they’re in no way exclusive to AI writing. Not at all. This is the reason why human-written content gets flagged: these patterns can occur in human writing most naturally, because they’re simply a part of the language. Yet humanizing requires you to alter or remove them entirely, though there’s nothing wrong in using them.

How to Identify AI-Detected Flags?

AI flags can be identified via AI detection tools, like ZeroGPT.

You need to input your content into ZeroGPT and run the detection test. It will highlight the parts it thinks are AI-generated.

You might be wondering how you would know which patterns exactly are causing the detection in the text. The solution is to get familiar with common patterns so that you can recognize them by reading.

Workflow for Fixing AI Flags

Here’s a simple workflow you can follow to fix AI-detected flags:

1. Input the text into an AI detector

2. Run detection check to check detection score and AI flags

3. Examine the detection report

4. Identify patterns that might be causing the detection

5. Rewrite the text to humanize

6. Repeat steps 2-5

7 Common AI Flags

Let’s take a look at seven common AI flags and how to fix them.

1. Common AI Terms and Phrases

AI chatbots repeat certain words in their content, such as “rhythm” and “driven,” also called “AI-isms.”

Common AI words are one of the reasons AI detection tools flag content as AI, these words occur very frequently in AI writing. But they’re also the easiest way to humanize AI content.

To humanize the text, replace the common words you identified with their natural alternatives. Natural alternatives to AI words are usually their simpler counterparts, such as “use” to “utilize.”

Here are some of the common AI words and phrases to look out for, and their natural alternatives:

It might not be possible to replace each and every term in the content if you need to maintain a strictly formal tone. You don’t replace every word or phrase in that case, just replace the ones you can.

Protip: Paraphraser.us’s AI text humanizer takes only a few seconds to humanize your content by replacing its robotic terms with natural ones and breaking other AI writing patterns. If efficiency is what you need, Paraphraser.us offers you just that!

2. Common AI Sentence Constructions

Certain sentence constructions are very common in AI text. Some notable examples include:

1. “whether… or…”

• Example: “One concern businesses often have is whether AI-generated or AI-assisted content sounds robotic.”

2. “turn X into X…”

• Example: “You can turn AI drafts into something that feels intentional.”

3. “By doing X, …”

• Example: “By automating repetitive tasks, businesses reduce the time spent on manual work.”

4. “While X , Y”

• Example: “While that reads cleanly, it can also feel unnatural.”

5. “While X does, Y doesn’t” / “While X doesn’t, Y does”

• Example: “While AI can suggest emotionally charged words, it doesn’t truly understand tone or timing.”

• Example: “While AI doesn’t replace thinking, too much reliance on it can weaken your own skills.”

6. “If X, Y”

• Example: “If your content sounds mechanical, engagement drops.”

These common constructions easily get your content flagged regardless of whether it’s written by AI or you.

You can rewrite the sentence and break its robotic construction to humanize it. For example:

• AI Sentence: “One concern businesses often have is whether AI-generated or AI-assisted content sounds robotic.”

• Humanized: “Businesses are concerned about their content sounding AI-generated.”

• AI Sentence: “While AI doesn’t replace thinking, too much reliance on it can weaken your own skills.”

• Humanized: “AI can’t replace thinking. But too much reliance on it can weaken your own skills.”

• AI Sentence: “You can turn AI drafts into something that feels intentional.”

• Humanized: “You can make AI drafts feel intentional.”

Simplification is an easy way to fix these sentences. Just simplify the clauses into separate sentences and the construction usually breaks.

3. Sentences Beginning With Subordinate Clauses

A lot of AI sentences are structured with a subordinate (dependent) clause followed by an independent clause. Examples:

• “If your content feels natural and clear, readers stay longer.”

• “When many users rely on similar prompts, phrasing and structure can overlap.”

• “When a report repeats large sections of text from previous work or other sources, it may be flagged as duplicate.”

• “In engineering reports, duplication weakens the document’s integrity.”

• “When used wisely, AI tools are a strong support to your writing process.”

• “Despite the evolution of the language, very few spelling reforms have been adopted by the French Academy.”

In many cases, it’s unnecessary to start a sentence with a subordinate clause. It sounds impactful but isn’t always necessary, especially not as much as it occurs in AI writing.

The fix is to restructure sentences and swap their clauses. Try to eliminate as many commas due to subordinate clauses as possible and make sentences more straightforward. For example:

• AI Sentence: “If your content feels natural and clear, readers stay longer.”

• Humanized: “Readers stay longer if your content feels natural and clear.”

• AI Sentence: “When many users rely on similar prompts, phrasing and structure can overlap.”

• Humanized: “Phrasing and structure can overlap when many users rely on similar prompts.”

• AI Sentence: “When a report repeats large sections of text from previous work or other sources, it may be flagged as duplicate.”

• Humanized: “A report may be flagged as duplicate when it repeats large sections of text from previous work or other sources.”

You may need to interchange subjects with their pronouns (like “report” with “it”), so make the necessary tweaks you need.

4. Mid-length Sentences

It’s another very strong AI pattern. AI tools write mildly short to mid-level sentences, ranging from 10-25 words. These sentences offer a balanced pace of reading with clarity and prevents readers from getting confused while reading. They’re neither staccato (1-6 words) nor too long, normally, unless prompted or except in certain types of writing, such as social media captions.

AI detectors check what’s called “burstiness” in AI writing, which measures variation in length and structure of sentences. Low burstiness means less variation in sentence lengths and structures while a higher burstiness signals a higher level of variation in said aspects. Human writing is said to be naturally high in burstiness, though that’s not always the case. But AI writing is usually low in burstiness, which is one of the ways it can be humanized.

The humanizing process in this case involves shortening sentences and mixing both long and shorter ones together to add variation in the text. Shortening sentences works better than making them longer. In fact, you can achieve low AI detection scores by just making sentences very short (roughly 1-6 words). But that can result in overly staccato and unnatural writing, where every sentence feels babyish and truncated, which is something you want to avoid in professional writing especially but also generally, simply to maintain the quality of your content.

It’s worth noting that sentences can get flagged, even if they’re short or long, if they combine other AI patterns very strongly, including AI words, phrases, adverbs, clauses, and other telltale signs.

5. Softening Words

These are mostly hedgers or diminishers like “may” and “probably” that cause AI detection.

Hedgers and diminishers refer to words that perform the function of softening the language and help make a statement or claim feel less intense. Both hedgers and diminishers are functions, and both have their distinct way of softening what is said; hedgers focus on softening the intensity or truth of the statement while diminishers soften the degree (volume, length, etc.). For example:

• The Direct Statement: "The room is a mess." (100% certain that the room is a mess).

• Softening Using a Hedger: "The room appears to be a mess."

• What happened: The “certainty” of the claim is softened. The speaker is no longer saying that the room is a mess for a fact; they’re just saying that’s how it looks to them.

• Softening Using a Diminisher: "The room is a bit of a mess."

• What happened: The speaker softened the intensity of the claim. They’re sure it’s a mess but they’re implying that it’s only a small, manageable mess.

AI tools (and media!) like using these softeners a lot. These allow them to leave room for uncertainty and avoid making blunt statements to keep a neutral or safe profile. For example:

• “While the information may be correct, the tone may feel distant or generic in AI writing.”

• “A human editor might shorten long sentences and replace stiff wording with more natural expressions”

• “When content reads smoothly and naturally, readers are more likely to stay engaged.”

The fix is simple: remove the softener. For example:

• AI Sentence: “While the information may be correct, the tone may feel distant or generic in AI writing.”

• Humanized: “While the information is correct, the tone feels distant or generic in AI writing.”

• AI Sentence: “A human editor might shorten long sentences and replace stiff wording with more natural expressions.”

• Humanized: “A human editor can shorten long sentences and replace stiff wording with more natural expressions.”

• AI Sentence: “When content reads smoothly and naturally, readers are more likely to stay engaged.”

• Humanized: “When content reads smoothly and naturally, readers stay engaged.”

It might not always be possible to remove each and every softener, especially in formal writing or subjects that require them, so you don’t have to remove every instance.

6. Lack of Contractions

AI tools tend to avoid contractions (‘) because they use a formal tone. For example, they’re:

• likely to write: “It is” or “They are” (without contractions

• instead of: “It’s” or “They’re” (with contractions)

…respectively.

But contractions aren’t welcome in every subject, because they can make the writing feel less formal and more casual or informal. However, some style guides may allow contractions even in professional writing. The overall tone in writing is also a matter of the writer’s author's voice if they’re allowed to use it, which may allow contractions.

In these cases, you can safely use contractions to humanize AI text, but don’t go overboard.

• AI Sentence: “When readers encounter content that feels genuine and consistent, they are more likely to see the brand as authentic.”

• Humanized: “When readers encounter content that feels genuine and consistent, they’re more likely to see the brand as authentic.”

7. Compound adjectives, like “emotion-driven”

AI tools are not just fond of adjectives. They specifically like using compound adjectives like “brand-specific” and “community-driven” to describe nouns.

Compound adjectives are a combination of two (or more) words using hyphens (-) to modify or describe a noun. These aren’t too frequent in AI writing but redundant for sure. Most compound adjectives common in AI writing also have a distinct style, possibly because the overall word choice is robotic. Many of them use the word “driven,” for example.

Here are some examples of compound adjectives in AI writing:

• “Your emails sound sales-driven.”

• “Train AI systems using brand-specific examples.”

• “For example, a brand that positions itself as empathetic and community-driven should not suddenly publish robotic, overly corporate content.”

• “AI-generated content often lacks emotional nuance grounded in real-world interaction.”

• “Sentence fragments can result in a natural-sounding writing.”

Tweaking sentences to remove these adjectives, where possible, can help humanize them. You usually need to turn a descriptive-style sentence into an explanatory one for removing compound adjectives, which can make the sentence a bit longer, but it also makes the tone feel more natural, if not overdone. For example:

• AI Sentence: “Your emails sound sales-driven.”

• Humanized: “Your emails sound like they are focused solely on making a sale.”

• AI Sentence: “Train AI systems using brand-specific examples.”

• Humanized: “Train AI systems using examples specific to the brand.”

• AI Sentence: “AI-generated content often lacks emotional nuance grounded in real-world interaction.”

• Humanized (1): “AI-generated content often lacks emotional nuance grounded in interactions from our real world.”

• Humanized (2): “Content generated by AI often lacks emotional nuance that’s found in human interactions.”

• AI Sentence: “Sentence fragments can result in a natural-sounding writing.”

• Humanized: “Sentence fragments can make writing sound natural.”

Though not all compound adjectives are robotic or even avoidable, so it’s okay if you can’t remove all of them.

These are all effective ways to fix common AI-detected flags and humanize AI content. Some flags may not be immediately clear upon checking if you’re not familiar with AI patterns, so take your time to read the text properly and before you can fix them.

Conclusion

Common AI-detected flags can occur in human writing if the author uses words, phrases, or sentence constructions that are common in AI writing. AI detection tools see these elements as robotic and flag them during detection checks. But humanizing can help avoid these flags, such as by replacing common AI words and phrases with natural alternatives, breaking AI sentence constructions, adding variation into sentences by combining short and long ones, avoiding softening words (hedgers and diminishers), adding contractions, and removing compound adjectives. These fixes humanize the text and make it natural to read.