# A Systematic Analysis of Linguistic Features in AI-Generated Text Detection Across Domains and Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.04177 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.04177/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 14 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Jun 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Defending Against Neural Fake News](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.12616/) (2019)
- [GLTR: Statistical Detection and Visualization of Generated Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.04043/) (2019)
- [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)
- [OUTFOX: LLM-Generated Essay Detection Through In-Context Learning with Adversarially Generated Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.11729/) (2023)
- [Contrasting Linguistic Patterns in Human and LLM-Generated News Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09067/) (2023)
- [Do LLMs write like humans? Variation in grammatical and rhetorical styles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.16107/) (2024)
- [DeTeCtive: Detecting AI-generated Text via Multi-Level Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.20964/) (2024)
- [Word Affect Intensities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.08798/) (2017)
- [StyloAI: Distinguishing AI-Generated Content with Stylometric Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10129/) (2024)
- [Spotting AI's Touch: Identifying LLM-Paraphrased Spans in Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12689/) (2024)
- [Exploring the Limitations of Detecting Machine-Generated Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11073/) (2024)
- [Detecting Machine-Generated Texts: Not Just "AI vs Humans" and Explainability is Complicated](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18259/) (2024)
- [ExaGPT: Example-Based Machine-Generated Text Detection for Human Interpretability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.11336/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Interpretable linguistic features offer a promising approach for explaining why a given text appears machine-generated, particularly for non-expert users. However, existing findings on which features reliably indicate LLM-generated text remain fragmented across feature sets, models, and text domains. To address this gap, we conduct a large-scale empirical study assessing the robustness of linguistic signals for characterizing AI-generated text. Our analysis covers 284 interpretable linguistic features across outputs from 27 LLMs and ten text domains under cross-model and cross-domain generalization settings. We show that classifiers based solely on linguistic features can reliably distinguish AI-generated from human-written text. However, many previously proposed indicators prove strongly context-dependent, with the exception of measures of lexical richness, which remain robust signals across model families and text domains. These results demonstrate which linguistic signals generalize across contexts and provide a foundation for more reliable, interpretable analyses of AI-generated language.