@inproceedings{liu-etal-2026-wavedetect,
title = "{W}ave{D}etect: Robust Framework for Machine-Generated Text Detection via Wavelet Transform",
author = "Liu, Zhichen and
Qin, Kaitong and
He, Linhan and
Xu, Yang",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {ACL} 2026",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.424/",
pages = "8712--8727",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-395-1",
abstract = "As Large Language Models asymptotically approach human-level fluency in natural language generation, solely relying on surface-level semantic artifacts for detecting LLM-generated texts has become increasingly precarious. Existing detectors often falter when facing three critical challenges: adversarial perturbations, cross-domain shifts, and the rapid temporal evolution of the foundation model. To address these issues, we propose , a novel framework that reformulates text detection as a signal processing task within the time-frequency domain. Unlike previous methods that analyze static token probability distributions, models the generated output as a probability signal, upon which a differentiable Continuous Wavelet Transform is applied to convert them into learnable spectral representations. This process reveals the intrinsic ``spectral fingerprints'' in machine-generated texts{--}patterns that remain invisible in time domain. Comprehensive evaluations on three well-curated datasets (RAID, EvoBench, and Domain-Shift) show that our method achieves a new state-of-the-art. It not only achieves superior accuracy but also exhibits remarkable robustness against sophisticated attacks, generalization across out-of-distribution topics and unseen evolving LLMs. Our results validate the efficacy of spectral analysis as a promising paradigm for LLM-generated texts detection."
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<abstract>As Large Language Models asymptotically approach human-level fluency in natural language generation, solely relying on surface-level semantic artifacts for detecting LLM-generated texts has become increasingly precarious. Existing detectors often falter when facing three critical challenges: adversarial perturbations, cross-domain shifts, and the rapid temporal evolution of the foundation model. To address these issues, we propose , a novel framework that reformulates text detection as a signal processing task within the time-frequency domain. Unlike previous methods that analyze static token probability distributions, models the generated output as a probability signal, upon which a differentiable Continuous Wavelet Transform is applied to convert them into learnable spectral representations. This process reveals the intrinsic “spectral fingerprints” in machine-generated texts–patterns that remain invisible in time domain. Comprehensive evaluations on three well-curated datasets (RAID, EvoBench, and Domain-Shift) show that our method achieves a new state-of-the-art. It not only achieves superior accuracy but also exhibits remarkable robustness against sophisticated attacks, generalization across out-of-distribution topics and unseen evolving LLMs. Our results validate the efficacy of spectral analysis as a promising paradigm for LLM-generated texts detection.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T WaveDetect: Robust Framework for Machine-Generated Text Detection via Wavelet Transform
%A Liu, Zhichen
%A Qin, Kaitong
%A He, Linhan
%A Xu, Yang
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-395-1
%F liu-etal-2026-wavedetect
%X As Large Language Models asymptotically approach human-level fluency in natural language generation, solely relying on surface-level semantic artifacts for detecting LLM-generated texts has become increasingly precarious. Existing detectors often falter when facing three critical challenges: adversarial perturbations, cross-domain shifts, and the rapid temporal evolution of the foundation model. To address these issues, we propose , a novel framework that reformulates text detection as a signal processing task within the time-frequency domain. Unlike previous methods that analyze static token probability distributions, models the generated output as a probability signal, upon which a differentiable Continuous Wavelet Transform is applied to convert them into learnable spectral representations. This process reveals the intrinsic “spectral fingerprints” in machine-generated texts–patterns that remain invisible in time domain. Comprehensive evaluations on three well-curated datasets (RAID, EvoBench, and Domain-Shift) show that our method achieves a new state-of-the-art. It not only achieves superior accuracy but also exhibits remarkable robustness against sophisticated attacks, generalization across out-of-distribution topics and unseen evolving LLMs. Our results validate the efficacy of spectral analysis as a promising paradigm for LLM-generated texts detection.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.424/
%P 8712-8727
Markdown (Informal)
[WaveDetect: Robust Framework for Machine-Generated Text Detection via Wavelet Transform](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.424/) (Liu et al., Findings 2026)
ACL