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GuidesJuly 5, 2026· 9 min read

What "99% Accurate" Really Means in AI Detectors

Accuracy claims hide two very different error types. Understanding them will change how you read every score.

S
The Sahihly Team

Building bilingual writing-quality tools

Two errors, one number

A detector can fail in two ways: flagging human writing as AI (false positive) or missing AI text entirely (false negative). A single "accuracy" number blends both — and the blend depends entirely on what texts were tested.

Why false positives matter most

For students and professionals, a false positive is the costly error: your own honest writing gets flagged. Non-native phrasing, formal registers, and heavily edited text all raise false-positive risk. This is exactly why scores should inform revision, never verdicts.

Questions to ask any detector

  • What languages was it validated on? English-only validation says nothing about Arabic.
  • Does it show which sentences drove the score?
  • Does it express uncertainty, or pretend to be binary?

Sahihly shows sentence-level highlights and treats every score as an estimate — because that's what it honestly is.

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