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- cross-posted to:
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The secret weapon of stylometry – the statistical analysis of writing style – is something called “function words.” Most people assume AI looks for unique topical vocabulary. It actually looks for words like the, and, of, and in. Authors use these filler words unconsciously. Because you do not think about them, they are incredibly difficult to fake or manipulate. You naturally drop them into sentences at a highly specific, mathematical rate, making your “word print” almost wholly unique.
Edit : Since this seems to be an AI summarization (the whole site seems to be, upon closer investigation), here’s the original journal article from PLOS .
I think successful stylometry would require either a known target (whose writing can be compared to suspected accounts), or a public body of work to compare to. I think this poses the greatest risk to say, known authors writing something anonymously on the side. For the average individual, I think avoiding social media or posting anything written under your government name is probably sufficient. If you’re a known target, obviously your threat model changes drastically.
When everything you write (online) is recorded forever, it’s fair to say that eventually you will be a target of something or someone. The risk introduced with this AI approach is in the relative ease with which even a novice can do a mass-unmasking of large groups of previously anonymous people.