# Beyond Raw Detection Scores: Markov-Informed Calibration for Boosting Machine-Generated Text Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.08031 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.08031/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 34 of its 48 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [TruthfulQA: Measuring How Models Mimic Human Falsehoods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07958/) (2021)
- [DetectGPT: Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection using Probability Curvature](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11305/) (2023)
- [A Watermark for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.10226/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Scissorhands: Exploiting the Persistence of Importance Hypothesis for LLM KV Cache Compression at Test Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17118/) (2023)
- [Paraphrasing evades detectors of AI-generated text, but retrieval is an effective defense](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13408/) (2023)
- [Can AI-Generated Text be Reliably Detected?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11156/) (2023)
- [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)
- [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)
- [DNA-GPT: Divergent N-Gram Analysis for Training-Free Detection of GPT-Generated Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17359/) (2023)
- [Intrinsic Dimension Estimation for Robust Detection of AI-Generated Texts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04723/) (2023)
- [Ghostbuster: Detecting Text Ghostwritten by Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15047/) (2023)
- [REMARK-LLM: A Robust and Efficient Watermarking Framework for Generative Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.12362/) (2023)
- [Adaptive Text Watermark for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.13927/) (2024)
- [Multiscale Positive-Unlabeled Detection of AI-Generated Texts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18149/) (2023)
- [Advancing Beyond Identification: Multi-bit Watermark for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.00221/) (2023)
- [SeqXGPT: Sentence-Level AI-Generated Text Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08903/) (2023)
- [Origin Tracing and Detecting of LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.14072/) (2023)
- [DetectRL: Benchmarking LLM-Generated Text Detection in Real-World Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23746/) (2024)
- [Training-free LLM-generated Text Detection by Mining Token Probability Sequences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.06072/) (2024)
- [CoCo: Coherence-Enhanced Machine-Generated Text Detection Under Data Limitation With Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10341/) (2022)
- [Disinformation Capabilities of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.08838/) (2023)
- [Zero-Shot Detection of Machine-Generated Codes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05103/) (2023)
- [Detecting Subtle Differences between Human and Model Languages Using Spectrum of Relative Likelihood](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19874/) (2024)
- [RepreGuard: Detecting LLM-Generated Text by Revealing Hidden Representation Patterns](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13152/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Multi-Level Contextual Token Relation Modeling for Machine-Generated Text Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.16107/) (2026)
- [Using LLMs to Detect LLM-Generated Texts: A Cross-Generation Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.34691/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

While machine-generated texts (MGTs) offer great convenience, they also pose risks such as disinformation and phishing, highlighting the need for reliable detection. Metric-based methods, which extract statistically distinguishable features of MGTs, are often more practical than complex model-based methods that are prone to overfitting. Given their diverse designs, we first place representative metric-based methods within a unified framework, enabling a clear assessment of their advantages and limitations. Our analysis identifies a core challenge across these methods: the token-level detection score is easily biased by the inherent randomness of the MGTs generation process. To address this, we theoretically and empirically reveal two relationships of context detection scores that may aid calibration: Neighbor Similarity and Initial Instability. We then propose a Markov-informed score calibration strategy that models these relationships using Markov random fields, and implements it as a lightweight component via a mean-field approximation, allowing our method to be seamlessly integrated into existing detectors. Extensive experiments in various real-world scenarios, such as cross-LLM and paraphrasing attacks, demonstrate significant gains over baselines with negligible computational overhead. The code is available at https://github.com/tmlr-group/MRF_Calibration.