Did you copy content from ChatGPT or another AI and paste it into your CMS? There’s a good chance the HTML is telling on you.
AI-generated content often carries extra code—quiet signals tucked into your page source. They’re invisible to your readers but plainly visible to browsers, bots, and anyone reading the HTML. These markers don’t exist to help you. They exist for the tools that created the content. That creates friction you probably didn’t bargain for.
What AI Leaves Behind
When you copy AI-generated text into a site editor, the HTML may include tags like:
These data-start and data-end attributes are not added by your content management system. They’re AI residue—position markers, token boundaries, or generation timestamps that never got stripped out.
You might also find this:
That ai-optimize class isn’t exclusive to external AI tools like ChatGPT. If you’re using the Yoast SEO Premium plugin and its AI writing assistant is active, it can add this class automatically—even if the writing wasn’t generated by AI at all.
The takeaway? Your clean copy may not be so clean after all.
It’s Not Just a WordPress Problem
This problem isn’t locked into WordPress. It applies to any content management system (CMS) or any platform with a WYSIWYG editor—a “What You See Is What You Get” interface.
If your platform allows you to paste formatted content and publish it online, this affects you.
That includes:
- Wix
- Squarespace
- Drupal
- Joomla
- HubSpot
- Shopify
- Google Sites
- Classic ASP/.NET CMSs
And even some email marketing editors
These systems let you drop in text with styling, and that’s where the AI-generated HTML sneaks through. It may not show up in the visual editor, but it will be in your code.
Why That Matters
Search engines crawl source code—not just what’s visible on the screen. Bots like Googlebot and Bingbot can easily detect data-start, data-end, and ai-optimize tags. They don’t need to guess. These markers spell it out.
Whether this impacts rankings is up for debate. But from a technical SEO and authenticity perspective, it introduces noise. Even worse, a reviewer or client inspecting your code may wrongly assume you’re publishing auto-generated content, even if you wrote it yourself.
The potential for false positives is real. That’s especially true if you’re using SEO tools that quietly inject their own AI-related tags.
See It for Yourself
I recorded a short video that shows exactly how this hidden code ends up on your site.
The clip walks through a side-by-side comparison of regular HTML and content pasted from an AI tool. It’s a short demo, but it speaks volumes.
How to Detect Hidden AI Tags
To identify and analyze this code, I recommend using Screaming Frog SEO Spider. It’s a desktop crawler trusted by SEOs worldwide.
Here’s what to do:
- Run a full site crawl.
- Use the Custom Search feature.
- Set Search 1 to data-start.
- Set Search 2 to data-end.
In one audit, I found that about 6% of a site’s blog posts contained these tell-tale tags. Some pages had them 100+ times. Each instance corresponds to a generated text block.
This isn’t about pointing fingers. It’s about being honest with yourself about what’s actually living in your site’s code.
How to Clean It Up
If you want to strip out these extra indicators, here’s how I handle it:
- Start by pasting content into plain text editors like Notepad or VS Code. That clears the formatting.
- When editing published pages, switch to HTML view or the “Text” tab in your editor.
- Remove every instance of data-start, data-end, or ai-optimize.
For sites with dozens (or hundreds) of posts, consider writing a regular expression search-and-replace or use a cleanup plugin if your CMS supports it.
Note: If you’re using Gutenberg or page builders like Elementor, double-check your layout before saving changes. Remove only what you know won’t break the layout.
About Yoast’s AI Tagging
If you’re running Yoast SEO Premium and have enabled its built-in AI assistant, it will quietly add classes like ai-optimize to your content. This happens even when the AI feature is used for editing rather than generation.
This means that fully human-written content can still end up marked with class names implying AI assistance. If you’re concerned about perception or code integrity, go to Yoast’s settings and turn off the AI writing feature entirely.
Or, inspect the source code after each edit to confirm what’s been inserted.
Why This Should Be On Your Radar
Clean HTML isn’t just a developer’s issue anymore. It affects perception, trust, and technical SEO.
If you’ve ever wondered why a page got flagged, de-ranked, or questioned, the answer might not be visible on the surface—it might be buried in the code.
That includes content you believe is 100% human. If an AI tool or plugin touched it at any stage, there’s a chance something was added without your knowledge.
You can’t rely on what the visual editor shows. You have to check the code.
The Bottom Line
Copying AI-generated text into your CMS can quietly insert HTML tags that tell the real story. In some cases, even hand-written posts get caught in the crossfire—especially if you’re using plugins or editors with built-in AI helpers.
If you care about transparency, authorship, and SEO clarity, take a few minutes to inspect your HTML. Clean up anything that doesn’t belong. Whether you’re writing for readers, clients, or compliance teams, it’s better to be safe than misunderstood.
Because the content may look human. But the code never lies.
