SearchLLM: Detecting LLM Paraphrased Text by Measuring the Similarity with Regeneration of the Candidate Source via Search Engine

Hoang-Quoc Nguyen-Son, Minh-Son Dao, Koji Zettsu


Abstract
With the advent of large language models (LLMs), it has become common practice for users to draft text and utilize LLMs to enhance its quality through paraphrasing. However, this process can sometimes result in the loss or distortion of the original intended meaning. Due to the human-like quality of LLM-generated text, traditional detection methods often fail, particularly when text is paraphrased to closely mimic original content. In response to these challenges, we propose a novel approach named SearchLLM, designed to identify LLM-paraphrased text by leveraging search engine capabilities to locate potential original text sources. By analyzing similarities between the input and regenerated versions of candidate sources, SearchLLM effectively distinguishes LLM-paraphrased content. SearchLLM is designed as a proxy layer, allowing seamless integration with existing detectors to enhance their performance. Experimental results across various LLMs demonstrate that SearchLLM consistently enhances the accuracy of recent detectors in detecting LLM-paraphrased text that closely mimics original content. Furthermore, SearchLLM also helps the detectors prevent paraphrasing attacks.
Anthology ID:
2026.eacl-long.79
Volume:
Proceedings of the 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Month:
March
Year:
2026
Address:
Rabat, Morocco
Editors:
Vera Demberg, Kentaro Inui, Lluís Marquez
Venue:
EACL
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
1755–1772
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URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-eacl/2026.eacl-long.79/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Hoang-Quoc Nguyen-Son, Minh-Son Dao, and Koji Zettsu. 2026. SearchLLM: Detecting LLM Paraphrased Text by Measuring the Similarity with Regeneration of the Candidate Source via Search Engine. In Proceedings of the 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 1755–1772, Rabat, Morocco. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
SearchLLM: Detecting LLM Paraphrased Text by Measuring the Similarity with Regeneration of the Candidate Source via Search Engine (Nguyen-Son et al., EACL 2026)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-eacl/2026.eacl-long.79.pdf