AI Detection Tool Claims Pope’s AI Warnings Were AI-Generated

On Monday, a newly created Reddit account appeared in the popular forum r/AmItheAsshole, where strangers weigh in on personal conflicts. The user asked whether they were wrong for “refusing to babysit my stepmother’s kids because I have my own job and responsibilities.” The post was concise, clearly written, and described a situation where the user’s stepmother and father frequently expected last-minute childcare, culminating in an argument.

“Now there’s tension at home, and I’m starting to wonder if I handled it the wrong way,” the redditor wrote. “I do understand that raising kids is stressful, but I also feel like I shouldn’t be obligated to take on that responsibility when it’s not my role.” Most responses sided with the original poster, advising that the children were not their responsibility and suggesting that moving out might be the best solution.

However, according to AI detection software developed by Pangram Labs,which boasts a 99.98 percent accuracy rate and a false positive rate of just one in 10,000,the story of family tension was actually AI-generated.

I noticed the post flagged as AI content while browsing, thanks to Pangram’s updated Chrome extension, which launches publicly this week. For $20 per month, the paid tier scans posts on social platforms like Reddit, X, LinkedIn, Medium, and Substack in real time, classifying them as human-written, AI-generated, or AI-assisted. The tool also displays its confidence level: low, medium, or high.

AI-generated content has become pervasive across the internet, undermining both journalism and social media. According to a study published this month by researchers at Stanford University, the Imperial College of London, and the Internet Archive, more than a third of all new websites in 2025 contain text produced at least partially by AI. (The researchers used earlier versions of Pangram’s tools for their analysis.)

This digital mess is what Max Spero, CEO of Pangram and a self-described “slop janitor,” aims to address. He told WIRED that integrating instant analysis into the browser extension gives users a more seamless way to detect AI content on the sites they visit regularly.

“By providing proactive checks, it can be a lot more useful to people who just generally care about not seeing slop,” Spero explained. “It’s a big lift to go paste some text into an external tool. People just aren’t going to do that.”

Of course, fabricated scenarios are nothing new on subreddits like r/AmItheAsshole, where trolls often post outrageous fiction to generate engagement. Still, even a skeptical reader might not suspect a relatively mundane story like this one could be fake. (The redditor who posted it did not respond to a request for comment about whether they used AI or what their intent was; they later deleted the post.)

No AI detection system is flawless, but third-party researchers at multiple universities consider Pangram’s the most consistent and accurate. A 2025 University of Chicago audit of AI detection software gave Pangram its highest rating, noting that its false positive rate was nearly zero, particularly on longer texts. Spero attributes the tool’s superior performance to its training on “harder examples that are closer to the boundary between AI and human.” When I tested it on WIRED articles, I could not produce a false positive.