arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 31

AI Writers Have a Consistent Stylometric Footprint, but AI Editors Do Not

The study demonstrates that text produced by large language models (LLMs) leaves a distinct stylometric footprint—primarily increased entropy and lexical diversity—across multiple models and domains. In contrast, AI editing of human text does not replicate this footprint; edited texts show only modest lexical diversity gains and reduced entropy, with lexical density emerging as the key distinguishing feature. Consequently, stylometric analysis can differentiate AI-generated from AI-edited content, but is less effective at distinguishing either from purely human writing.

By Zhengyang Shan, Yukyung Lee, Sophie Hao