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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.25860 |
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| _version_ | 1866917444246831104 |
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| author | La Cava, Lucio Tagarelli, Andrea |
| author_facet | La Cava, Lucio Tagarelli, Andrea |
| contents | Machine-generated text (MGT) detection requires identifying structurally invariant signals across generation models, rather than relying on model-specific fingerprints. In this respect, we hypothesize that while large language models excel at local semantic consistency, their autoregressive nature results in a specific kind of structural fragility compared to human writing. We propose Luminol-AIDetect, a novel, zero-shot statistical approach that exposes this fragility through coherence disruption. By applying a simple randomized text-shuffling procedure, we demonstrate that the resulting shift in perplexity serves as a principled, model-agnostic discriminant, as MGT displays a characteristic dispersion in perplexity-under-shuffling that differs markedly from the more stable structural variability of human-written text. Luminol-AIDetect leverages this distinction to inform its decision process, where a handful of perplexity-based scalar features are extracted from an input text and its shuffled version, then detection is performed via density estimation and ensemble-based prediction. Evaluated across 8 content domains, 11 adversarial attack types, and 18 languages, Luminol-AIDetect demonstrates state-of-the-art performance, with gains up to 17x lower FPR while being cheaper than prior methods. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_25860 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Luminol-AIDetect: Fast Zero-shot Machine-Generated Text Detection based on Perplexity under Text Shuffling La Cava, Lucio Tagarelli, Andrea Computation and Language Artificial Intelligence Computers and Society Machine-generated text (MGT) detection requires identifying structurally invariant signals across generation models, rather than relying on model-specific fingerprints. In this respect, we hypothesize that while large language models excel at local semantic consistency, their autoregressive nature results in a specific kind of structural fragility compared to human writing. We propose Luminol-AIDetect, a novel, zero-shot statistical approach that exposes this fragility through coherence disruption. By applying a simple randomized text-shuffling procedure, we demonstrate that the resulting shift in perplexity serves as a principled, model-agnostic discriminant, as MGT displays a characteristic dispersion in perplexity-under-shuffling that differs markedly from the more stable structural variability of human-written text. Luminol-AIDetect leverages this distinction to inform its decision process, where a handful of perplexity-based scalar features are extracted from an input text and its shuffled version, then detection is performed via density estimation and ensemble-based prediction. Evaluated across 8 content domains, 11 adversarial attack types, and 18 languages, Luminol-AIDetect demonstrates state-of-the-art performance, with gains up to 17x lower FPR while being cheaper than prior methods. |
| title | Luminol-AIDetect: Fast Zero-shot Machine-Generated Text Detection based on Perplexity under Text Shuffling |
| topic | Computation and Language Artificial Intelligence Computers and Society |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.25860 |