{"slug": "max-spero-is-one-of-time-s-100-most-influential-people-in-ai", "title": "Max Spero Is One of TIME's 100 Most Influential People in AI", "summary": "Pangram Labs, co-founded by CEO Max Spero, claims its AI-powered models can detect AI-generated writing with over 99.5% accuracy in internal tests, distinguishing between human- and AI-written segments. The company, which nearly shut down before surging in popularity last fall, raised $9 million by July and partnered with Substack to integrate its detection technology. Spero says Pangram will never release a 'humanizer' tool, aiming instead to become a standard for authorship verification online.", "body_md": "AI-generated writing has distinct patterns—and Pangram Labs says it can detect them. The company says its AI-powered [models](https://www.pangram.com/blog/introducing-pangram-4) can discern with over 99.5% accuracy whether a piece of writing was produced entirely by humans or AIs, according to its internal tests. Those tests also show its tools are able to differentiate between human- and AI-written segments within a given text, estimating the degree of AI involvement. As co-founder and CEO Max Spero explains, because most AI writing comes from just a handful of model families—ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and the like—identifying it is easier than many believed just a few years ago. “Ultimately, what we’re doing is an authorship detection problem,” he says.\n\nSpero says his company, founded in late 2023, was “close to shutting down” before Pangram spiked in popularity last fall as AI [slop](https://time.com/article/2026/03/26/ai-slop-is-threatening-musicians-can-tech-companies-stem-the-tide-/) proliferated across platforms. By July of this year, it had a $9 million fundraising round, a tool for detecting AI-generated images, and a [partnership](https://post.substack.com/p/against-claudefishing) with Substack to integrate its technology into the blogging platform.\n\nSome AI text detectors also offer “humanizers”—tools intended to reshape AI writing so it can slip past detection. Spero says Pangram Labs will never release one. It’s not just a matter of principle—Pangram’s long-term aspiration is for every layer of online communication to use its tools to verify authorship, a function for which he expects there to be a far larger market in the age of slop and AI impersonation.\n\nThe deeper challenge of tracing the extent to which ideas themselves are influenced by AI may be intractable. And frontier AI models are getting better all the time, while some people may be writing more like AIs. But Spero believes Pangram’s is deterring people from passing off AI writing as their own. “The LLMs aren’t static,” he says, “but neither is Pangram.”", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/max-spero-is-one-of-time-s-100-most-influential-people-in-ai", "canonical_source": "https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/2026/max-spero/", "published_at": "2026-08-27 12:02:38+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-27 12:21:22.544080+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-tools", "ai-startups"], "entities": ["Pangram Labs", "Max Spero", "Substack", "ChatGPT", "Claude", "Gemini"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/max-spero-is-one-of-time-s-100-most-influential-people-in-ai", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/max-spero-is-one-of-time-s-100-most-influential-people-in-ai.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/max-spero-is-one-of-time-s-100-most-influential-people-in-ai.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/max-spero-is-one-of-time-s-100-most-influential-people-in-ai.jsonld"}}