# Using LLMs to Detect LLM-Generated Texts: A Cross-Generation Analysis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.34691 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.34691/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 30 of its 58 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Sep 2026.

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

- [Qwen2.5 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15115/) (2024)
- [GPT-4o System Card](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21276/) (2024)
- [Survey of Hallucination in Natural Language Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.03629/) (2022)
- [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)
- [LLM Evaluators Recognize and Favor Their Own Generations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13076/) (2024)
- [All That's 'Human' Is Not Gold: Evaluating Human Evaluation of Generated Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.00061/) (2021)
- [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)
- [GPT detectors are biased against non-native English writers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02819/) (2023)
- [RAID: A Shared Benchmark for Robust Evaluation of Machine-Generated Text Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07940/) (2024)
- [A Survey on LLM-Generated Text Detection: Necessity, Methods, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.14724/) (2023)
- [ChatGPT or Human? Detect and Explain. Explaining Decisions of Machine Learning Model for Detecting Short ChatGPT-generated Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.13852/) (2023)
- [Do Language Models Plagiarize?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.07618/) (2022)
- [M4GT-Bench: Evaluation Benchmark for Black-Box Machine-Generated Text Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11175/) (2024)
- [People who frequently use ChatGPT for writing tasks are accurate and robust detectors of AI-generated text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.15654/) (2025)
- [Fighting Fire with Fire: Can ChatGPT Detect AI-generated Text?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.01284/) (2023)
- [Disinformation Capabilities of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.08838/) (2023)
- [Detecting Machine-Generated Texts: Not Just "AI vs Humans" and Explainability is Complicated](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18259/) (2024)
- [HACo-Det: A Study Towards Fine-Grained Machine-Generated Text Detection under Human-AI Coauthoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02959/) (2025)
- [A Practical Examination of AI-Generated Text Detectors for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.05139/) (2024)
- [Stress-testing Machine Generated Text Detection: Shifting Language Models Writing Style to Fool Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.24523/) (2025)
- [MoSEs: Uncertainty-Aware AI-Generated Text Detection via Mixture of Stylistics Experts with Conditional Thresholds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.02499/) (2025)
- [Know Thyself? On the Incapability and Implications of AI Self-Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.03399/) (2025)
- [SpecDetect: Simple, Fast, and Training-Free Detection of LLM-Generated Text via Spectral Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.11343/) (2025)
- [Beyond Raw Detection Scores: Markov-Informed Calibration for Boosting Machine-Generated Text Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.08031/) (2026)
- [AI Content Self-Detection for Transformer-based Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.17289/) (2023)
- ["I know myself better, but not really greatly": How Well Can LLMs Detect and Explain LLM-Generated Texts?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12743/) (2025)
- [Distinguishing Artificial from Authentic: Evaluating LLMs for Detecting LLM-Generated Content](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.20446/) (2026)
- [Self-Generated Text Recognition: Quality Heuristics, Cross-Task Transfer, and Downstream Bias in LLM Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.26159/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Automated detection of LLM-generated texts (LGTs) is critical, yet dedicated detectors often struggle to generalize across domains and models. While general-purpose LLMs offer flexible zero-shot authorship classification with explanatory rationale, their detection behavior, especially regarding self-detection versus cross-detection across model generations, remains poorly understood. We systematically evaluate 15 LLMs spanning three model generations as both generators and detectors. Using a benchmark of 1,000 human-written texts and 15,000 LGTs (1,000 per model), we collected over 233,000 binary classifications alongside natural-language explanations. Our results reveal that detection efficacy is primarily driven by detector capability rather than generator provenance, although outputs from newer generators remain notably harder to detect. Crucially, statistical comparisons show no systematic advantage or disadvantage for self-detection across models. Error analysis further exposes generational bias shifts: first-generation detectors under-detect LGTs (high false-negative rates), second-generation detectors over-flag human texts (high false-positive rates), and the latest models achieve balanced trade-offs. Finally, we highlight significant inconsistencies in how different LLMs apply textual cues to justify their decisions. Code: https://github.com/hyyuan/detect-llm-generated-texts.