108: Using AI Detection Tools to Fight AI Slop and Preserve Authenticity Online with Max Spero

**Max Spero** (0:00)
What we see is consumers check out when they're reading AI-generated content.

**Chris Daigle** (0:03)
What do you think, Max, that the Internet looks like in two to three years, if we don't do anything about detection or verification or distinguishing synthetic from authentic content?

**Max Spero** (0:13)
A couple of years ago, the Internet was 20-30 percent AI-generated, and by mid-2025, it's already 50 percent AI-generated. I think we're really going to be approaching 80 or 90 percent.

**Chris Daigle** (0:24)
So where is this line between smart assistance, say, and outsourcing your thinking too much?

**Max Spero** (0:30)
So I actually think the best work to outsource to AI is the work that you understand deeply and you're very knowledgeable about, because then you can tell when AI is bullshitting you.

**Chris Daigle** (0:39)
So with this manipulation, this flood of slop that's happening, where is it showing up first?

**Max Spero** (0:45)
I think the biggest one I'm seeing is SEO. There are some companies that let you fully automate your blog writing process with AI. At first glance, it's like, oh, I can put out as many blog posts as I want. Then what we see in reality is once you do that, you start ranking really well, you start getting a whole bunch of page views, and then at some point Google notices and it drops to zero.

**Chris Daigle** (1:08)
Max is the co-founder and CEO of Pangram, an AI detection startup fighting to protect human authenticity in a world flooded with AI slop. A Stanford-trained machine learning expert from Google and Neuro, he's helping people tell what's real from what's machine-made. Welcome to Using AI at Work. I'm your host, Chris Daigle. Each week, we'll be learning how today's business owners, entrepreneurs, and ambitious professionals are getting more done with smart use of tomorrow's tech.
Let's get started. Right now, every business leader is asking the same question. What are we going to do about AI? If this is you, chiefaiofficer.com has the answer. We give you a simple path forward where we provide executive and team training so your people know exactly how to safely use generative AI in their day-to-day.
We also manage the deployment and implementation to make sure tools actually get adopted and deliver results. And we'll also guide company-wide transformation so AI becomes part of your operating system, not just another shiny object. The companies that act now will increase productivity, cut costs and grow faster than their competitors. Those that wait will get left behind. So if you want to make AI work in your business, visit chiefaiofficer.com and see how we're helping companies of all sizes finally get results from AI. Hi everybody and welcome back to another episode of Using AI at Work. My name is Chris Daigle and I am the host of the show. Our guest today is Max Spero. Max is the co-founder of Pangram, which is an AI text detection company. They're based in Brooklyn and a growing team.
At the time that we last spoke in February, I guess you guys had around 10 people working in person, which is not the standard, I think, in the AI space. There's a lot of remote teams here. But one of the things that Pangram is doing is, I guess one of your claims to fame is that you guys uniquely detected an unreleased creative writing model output that everybody else just assumed was human or authentic output and not according to the Pangram algo. So one of the things that I think is important for our listeners today is that leaders are drowning in AI slop, whether it's on LinkedIn, whether it's in, you know, what's being sent to you via email from your clients or your vendors or anything like that. And it's important for you to be able to truly judge what's authentic, what's real, what's human output, and what's synthetic, especially to be able to do this at scale. And that's what Max's company does. So Max, welcome to the show.
We'll dig in in a minute, but is there anything that you think that the audience needs to know about why they should listen to this episode?

**Max Spero** (3:49)
Oh, thanks so much for having me. I mean, I think this is really important, especially for people who use AI in their daily lives, like I do. I think there's a lot of, there's a wide spectrum of what people believe is acceptable, AI use or not. And I think that's going to probably be a lot of what we cover is, like, how do we use AI in ways that empower us to be better and more effective without just flooding the people around us with AI slop?