GhostWriter: Hidden AI-Generated Texts over Multiple Languages, Domains and Generators

Manuel Schaaf, Kevin Bönisch, Alexander Mehler


Abstract
The advent of Transformer-based Large Language Models (LLMs) has led to an unprecedented surge of AI-generated text (AIGT) across online platforms and academic domains. While these models exhibit near-human fluency and stylistic coherence, their widespread adoption has raised concerns about authorship integrity, research quality, and the recursive contamination of training corpora with synthetic data. These developments underscore the need for reliable AIGT detection methods and benchmark datasets, particularly for malicious or deceptive ghostwriting scenarios where AIGT is intentionally crafted to evade detection. To address this, we present GhostWriter, a large-scale, bilingual (German and English), multi-generator, and multi-domain dataset for AIGT detection. The dataset comprises human- and AI-authored texts produced under domain-specific ghostwriting conditions, including examples intentionally embedded within otherwise human-written texts to obscure their AI origin. With GhostWriter, we (i) aim to expand the resources available for German AIGT datasets, (ii) emphasize mixed or fused synthesizations—since most existing corpora are limited to the document level—and (iii) introduce specifically crafted malicious ghostwriting scenarios across multiple domains and generators.
Anthology ID:
2026.lrec-1.823
Volume:
Proceedings of the Fifteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference
Month:
May
Year:
2026
Address:
Palma de Mallorca, Spain
Editors:
Stelios Piperidis, Núria Bel, Henk van den Heuvel, Nancy Ide, Simon Krek, Antonio Toral
Venue:
LREC
SIG:
Publisher:
ELRA Language Resource Association
Note:
Pages:
10497–10516
Language:
External URL:
https://lrec.elra.info/lrec2026-main-823
DOI:
10.63317/57fd7juh5zek
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Manuel Schaaf, Kevin Bönisch, and Alexander Mehler. 2026. GhostWriter: Hidden AI-Generated Texts over Multiple Languages, Domains and Generators. In Proceedings of the Fifteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, pages 10497–10516, Palma de Mallorca, Spain. ELRA Language Resource Association.
Cite (Informal):
GhostWriter: Hidden AI-Generated Texts over Multiple Languages, Domains and Generators (Schaaf et al., LREC 2026)
Copy Citation: