Human Texts Are Outliers: Detecting LLM-generated Texts via Out-of-distribution Detection

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Zeng, Cong, Tang, Shengkun, Chen, Yuanzhou, Shen, Zhiqiang, Yu, Wenchao, Zhao, Xujiang, Chen, Haifeng, Cheng, Wei, Xu, Zhiqiang
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Publié: 2025
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author Zeng, Cong
Tang, Shengkun
Chen, Yuanzhou
Shen, Zhiqiang
Yu, Wenchao
Zhao, Xujiang
Chen, Haifeng
Cheng, Wei
Xu, Zhiqiang
author_facet Zeng, Cong
Tang, Shengkun
Chen, Yuanzhou
Shen, Zhiqiang
Yu, Wenchao
Zhao, Xujiang
Chen, Haifeng
Cheng, Wei
Xu, Zhiqiang
contents The rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Claude has significantly increased the presence of AI-generated text in digital communication. This trend has heightened the need for reliable detection methods to distinguish between human-authored and machine-generated content. Existing approaches both zero-shot methods and supervised classifiers largely conceptualize this task as a binary classification problem, often leading to poor generalization across domains and models. In this paper, we argue that such a binary formulation fundamentally mischaracterizes the detection task by assuming a coherent representation of human-written texts. In reality, human texts do not constitute a unified distribution, and their diversity cannot be effectively captured through limited sampling. This causes previous classifiers to memorize observed OOD characteristics rather than learn the essence of `non-ID' behavior, limiting generalization to unseen human-authored inputs. Based on this observation, we propose reframing the detection task as an out-of-distribution (OOD) detection problem, treating human-written texts as distributional outliers while machine-generated texts are in-distribution (ID) samples. To this end, we develop a detection framework using one-class learning method including DeepSVDD and HRN, and score-based learning techniques such as energy-based method, enabling robust and generalizable performance. Extensive experiments across multiple datasets validate the effectiveness of our OOD-based approach. Specifically, the OOD-based method achieves 98.3% AUROC and AUPR with only 8.9% FPR95 on DeepFake dataset. Moreover, we test our detection framework on multilingual, attacked, and unseen-model and -domain text settings, demonstrating the robustness and generalizability of our framework. Code, pretrained weights, and demo will be released.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_08602
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Human Texts Are Outliers: Detecting LLM-generated Texts via Out-of-distribution Detection
Zeng, Cong
Tang, Shengkun
Chen, Yuanzhou
Shen, Zhiqiang
Yu, Wenchao
Zhao, Xujiang
Chen, Haifeng
Cheng, Wei
Xu, Zhiqiang
Computation and Language
Machine Learning
The rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Claude has significantly increased the presence of AI-generated text in digital communication. This trend has heightened the need for reliable detection methods to distinguish between human-authored and machine-generated content. Existing approaches both zero-shot methods and supervised classifiers largely conceptualize this task as a binary classification problem, often leading to poor generalization across domains and models. In this paper, we argue that such a binary formulation fundamentally mischaracterizes the detection task by assuming a coherent representation of human-written texts. In reality, human texts do not constitute a unified distribution, and their diversity cannot be effectively captured through limited sampling. This causes previous classifiers to memorize observed OOD characteristics rather than learn the essence of `non-ID' behavior, limiting generalization to unseen human-authored inputs. Based on this observation, we propose reframing the detection task as an out-of-distribution (OOD) detection problem, treating human-written texts as distributional outliers while machine-generated texts are in-distribution (ID) samples. To this end, we develop a detection framework using one-class learning method including DeepSVDD and HRN, and score-based learning techniques such as energy-based method, enabling robust and generalizable performance. Extensive experiments across multiple datasets validate the effectiveness of our OOD-based approach. Specifically, the OOD-based method achieves 98.3% AUROC and AUPR with only 8.9% FPR95 on DeepFake dataset. Moreover, we test our detection framework on multilingual, attacked, and unseen-model and -domain text settings, demonstrating the robustness and generalizability of our framework. Code, pretrained weights, and demo will be released.
title Human Texts Are Outliers: Detecting LLM-generated Texts via Out-of-distribution Detection
topic Computation and Language
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08602