TLDR: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a directive to Workado LLC, formerly Content At Scale AI, to cease advertising its ‘AI Content Detector’ as 98% accurate. Independent testing revealed the tool’s accuracy was only 53% for general-purpose content, despite claims of being trained on diverse materials. The FTC’s action, part of a broader crackdown on deceptive AI claims, requires Workado to substantiate future efficacy claims, notify consumers, and submit compliance reports.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken decisive action against Workado LLC, a company marketing an ‘AI Content Detector,’ ordering it to immediately stop making unsubstantiated claims about its product’s accuracy. This move, announced on April 28, 2025, underscores the FTC’s ongoing commitment to combating deceptive practices in the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence landscape.
According to the administrative complaint filed by the FTC, Workado LLC, previously known as Content At Scale AI, falsely advertised its AI Content Detector as being ’98 percent’ accurate in distinguishing between AI-generated and human-written text. However, independent testing conducted by the commission revealed a significantly lower accuracy rate of just 53% for general-purpose content, a performance level likened to a ‘coin toss’ by Chris Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.
The company had marketed its tool to consumers seeking to identify content created by generative AI products like ChatGPT. While Workado claimed its detector was trained on a wide array of materials, including blog posts and Wikipedia entries, the FTC found that the underlying AI model was primarily fine-tuned for academic content, leading to its poor performance on broader text types. The FTC asserts that these misleading and unsubstantiated performance claims constitute an unfair or deceptive practice, violating Section 5 of the FTC Act.
Under the terms of the proposed order, Workado is prohibited from making any future representations about the effectiveness or accuracy of its products unless it possesses ‘competent and reliable evidence’ to support such claims at the time they are made. Additionally, the Arizona-based company must retain all evidence used to back up efficacy claims, notify eligible consumers about the settlement, and submit compliance reports to the commission annually for four years, starting one year after the order’s issuance.
This enforcement action aligns with the FTC’s broader ‘Operation AI Comply’ initiative, launched in September 2024, which targets companies using AI to ‘supercharge’ harmful and deceptive business practices. Previous cases under this initiative have included actions against ‘AI Lawyer’ services like DoNotPay and AI tools used to generate fake product reviews. FTC Commissioner Melissa Holyoak recently reaffirmed the agency’s priority in ‘aggressively root[ing] out AI-powered frauds and scams’ while also emphasizing the need for flexibility to avoid stifling innovation.
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While Section 5 of the FTC Act does not permit monetary penalties for first-time violations, the order against Workado LLC aims to ensure future compliance and protect consumers from misleading AI-related product claims.
