How do you spot AI-written drafts from freelance writers?

Put things in the brief that a model can't produce: a quote from someone they actually spoke to, a screenshot they took themselves, a local example. Then spot check two or three of the sources they cite, made-up references show up fast.

I gave up on the detectors, they flag human writing all the time and miss lightly edited AI text. What works better is asking for the work in a shared Google Doc and looking at the version history. A piece that appears in two big pastes tells you a lot. The text itself gives it away too: no specifics, a stat with no source (or a source that doesn't exist), every paragraph ending on a neat summary. And ask the writer a follow-up question about something they wrote. Someone who did the research answers it easily.