# Reliably Bounding False Positives: A Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection Framework via Multiscaled Conformal Prediction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.05084 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.05084/

## Key facts

- Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 35 of its 70 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 May 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [SQuAD: 100,000+ Questions for Machine Comprehension of Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.05250/) (2016)
- [Unsupervised Cross-lingual Representation Learning at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.02116/) (2019)
- [OPT: Open Pre-trained Transformer Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.01068/) (2022)
- [QLoRA: Efficient Finetuning of Quantized LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14314/) (2023)
- [Scaling Instruction-Finetuned Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.11416/) (2022)
- [Character-level Convolutional Networks for Text Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.01626/) (2015)
- [Don't Give Me the Details, Just the Summary! Topic-Aware Convolutional Neural Networks for Extreme Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.08745/) (2018)
- [Hierarchical Neural Story Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.04833/) (2018)
- [The RefinedWeb Dataset for Falcon LLM: Outperforming Curated Corpora with Web Data, and Web Data Only](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01116/) (2023)
- [DetectGPT: Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection using Probability Curvature](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11305/) (2023)
- [ELI5: Long Form Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.09190/) (2019)
- [Release Strategies and the Social Impacts of Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.09203/) (2019)
- [GLTR: Statistical Detection and Visualization of Generated Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.04043/) (2019)
- [How Close is ChatGPT to Human Experts? Comparison Corpus, Evaluation, and Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.07597/) (2023)
- [Paraphrasing evades detectors of AI-generated text, but retrieval is an effective defense](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13408/) (2023)
- [A Corpus and Evaluation Framework for Deeper Understanding of Commonsense Stories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.01696/) (2016)
- [Fast-DetectGPT: Efficient Zero-Shot Detection of Machine-Generated Text via Conditional Probability Curvature](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05130/) (2023)
- [Spotting LLMs With Binoculars: Zero-Shot Detection of Machine-Generated Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12070/) (2024)
- [Automatic Detection of Generated Text is Easiest when Humans are Fooled](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.00650/) (2019)
- [DetectLLM: Leveraging Log Rank Information for Zero-Shot Detection of Machine-Generated Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05540/) (2023)
- [RADAR: Robust AI-Text Detection via Adversarial Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03838/) (2023)
- [RAID: A Shared Benchmark for Robust Evaluation of Machine-Generated Text Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07940/) (2024)
- [MAGE: Machine-generated Text Detection in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13242/) (2023)
- [DNA-GPT: Divergent N-Gram Analysis for Training-Free Detection of GPT-Generated Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17359/) (2023)
- [M4: Multi-generator, Multi-domain, and Multi-lingual Black-Box Machine-Generated Text Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14902/) (2023)
- [TURINGBENCH: A Benchmark Environment for Turing Test in the Age of Neural Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.13296/) (2021)
- [TweepFake: about Detecting Deepfake Tweets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.00036/) (2020)
- [Winning Arguments: Interaction Dynamics and Persuasion Strategies in Good-faith Online Discussions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.01103/) (2016)
- [MGTBench: Benchmarking Machine-Generated Text Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14822/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [DNA-DetectLLM: Unveiling AI-Generated Text via a DNA-Inspired Mutation-Repair Paradigm](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.15550/) (2025)
- [AI Text Detectors and the Misclassification of Slightly Polished Arabic Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.16690/) (2025)
- [Alignment Imprint: Zero-Shot AI-Generated Text Detection via Provable Preference Discrepancy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16923/) (2026)
- [MELD: Multi-Task Equilibrated Learning Detector for AI-Generated Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.06903/) (2026)
- [Once a Response, Always a Response: Detecting LLM-generated Text via Latent Prompt Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.05741/) (2026)
- [Exons-Detect: Identifying and Amplifying Exonic Tokens via Hidden-State Discrepancy for Robust AI-Generated Text Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.24981/) (2026)
- [Beyond Perplexity: Character Distribution Signatures and the MDTA Benchmark for AI Text Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.01647/) (2026)
- [AEyeDE: An Attention-Based Attribution Framework for AI-Generated Text Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.00016/) (2026)
- [Team DACTYL at PAN 2026: Bayesian Data Mixing and Empirical X-risk Minimization for AI-text Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.17382/) (2026)
- [Two Conformal Constructions for Adaptive Within-Document AI-Text Screening](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.31547/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The rapid advancement of large language models has raised significant concerns regarding their potential misuse by malicious actors. As a result, developing effective detectors to mitigate these risks has become a critical priority. However, most existing detection methods focus excessively on detection accuracy, often neglecting the societal risks posed by high false positive rates (FPRs). This paper addresses this issue by leveraging Conformal Prediction (CP), which effectively constrains the upper bound of FPRs. While directly applying CP constrains FPRs, it also leads to a significant reduction in detection performance. To overcome this trade-off, this paper proposes a Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection Framework via Multiscaled Conformal Prediction (MCP), which both enforces the FPR constraint and improves detection performance. This paper also introduces RealDet, a high-quality dataset that spans a wide range of domains, ensuring realistic calibration and enabling superior detection performance when combined with MCP. Empirical evaluations demonstrate that MCP effectively constrains FPRs, significantly enhances detection performance, and increases robustness against adversarial attacks across multiple detectors and datasets.