iA Writer now supports highlighting content written by ChatGPT

The minimalist writing application iA Writer has added a new author feature that distinguishes your own written text from words generated by AI software like ChatGPT.

iA Writer 7 is the latest version of the minimalist multi-platform writing software, which has a new feature that clearly marks text provided by AI systems such as ChatGPT. When your own words are displayed in black, you can choose to gray out the AI-generated text that you copy into your iA document. Then, as you make adjustments and edits to the content added by AI, you can easily track how much of the text is your original work and how much is AI-generated.

In a blog post about this feature, the company outlines its philosophy of using AI-generated text. The goal of iA Writer's feature is not to have AI "ghostwrite," "take over" everything, and make you "lose your own voice," but rather to encourage you to use AI as a "conversation partner" that helps you "think more and write better."

While there are some automated elements to this feature, it is largely a manual process. As stated in iA's blog post, "It depends on how honest you decide to be with yourself." Although the software can identify AI-generated text, it only marks it when copied along with the original prompt. If you copy the response generated by ChatGPT without the prompt, iA Writer cannot recognize it as text from ChatGPT. To manually display it as AI text, you can right-click, select "Paste As," and then choose "ChatGPT."

Therefore, this feature is not so much about detecting plagiarism or adding watermarks to AI-generated content, but rather providing a tool for creative individuals to see the sometimes blurry boundary between their own words and those contributed by AI.

The author identity feature is currently available only in the iA Writer Mac, iOS, and iPadOS applications. The company plans to extend it to other platforms of iA Writer in the future, such as Windows and Android. However, what's more interesting is that iA has already published the specification on GitHub and expressed willingness to collaborate with other applications to "ideally" turn this feature into a new standard.