AbjadGenEval: Abjad AI Generated Text Detection Shared Task for Languages Using Arabic Script at AbjadNLP 2026

Saad Ezzini; Irfan Ahmad; Salmane Chafik; Shadi Abudalfa; Mo El-Haj; Ahmed Abdelali; Mustafa Jarrar; Nadir Durrani; Hassan Sajjad; Farah Adeeba

doi:10.18653/v1/2026.abjadnlp-1.68

AbjadGenEval: Abjad AI Generated Text Detection Shared Task for Languages Using Arabic Script at AbjadNLP 2026

Saad Ezzini
, Irfan Ahmad
, Salmane Chafik
, Shadi Abudalfa
, Mo El-Haj
, Ahmed Abdelali
, Mustafa Jarrar
, Nadir Durrani
, Hassan Sajjad
, Farah Adeeba

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present the findings of the AbjadGenEval shared task, organized as part of the AbjadNLP workshop at EACL 2026, which benchmarks AI-generated text detection for Arabic-script languages. Extending beyond Arabic to include Urdu, the task serves as a binary classification platform distinguishing human-written from AI-generated news articles produced by varied LLMs (e.g., GPT, Gemini). Twenty teams participated, with top systems achieving F1 scores of 0.93 for Arabic and 0.89 for Urdu. The results highlight the dominance of multilingual transformers-specifically XLM-RoBERTa and DeBERTa-v3-and reveal significant challenges in cross-domain generalization, where naive data augmentation often yielded diminishing returns. This shared task establishes a robust baseline for authenticating content in the Abjad ecosystem.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	EACL 2026 - 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, AbjadNLP 2026
Editors	Mo El-Haj, Mo El-Haj, Paul Rayson, Mustafa Jarrar, Ignatius Ezeani, Saad Ezzini, Sina Ahmadi, Amal Haddad Haddad, Cynthia Amol, Ahmad Abdelali, Shadi Abudalfa
Publisher	Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
Pages	530-537
Number of pages	8
ISBN (Electronic)	9798891763616
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2026.abjadnlp-1.68
State	Published - 2026
Event	2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, AbjadNLP 2026 - Rabat, Morocco Duration: 28 Mar 2026 → …

Publication series

Name	EACL 2026 - 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, AbjadNLP 2026

Conference

Conference	2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, AbjadNLP 2026
Country/Territory	Morocco
City	Rabat
Period	28/03/26 → …

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2026 Association for Computational Linguistics.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Artificial Intelligence
Linguistics and Language
Computer Science Applications
Signal Processing

Access to Document

10.18653/v1/2026.abjadnlp-1.68

Cite this

Ezzini, S., Ahmad, I., Chafik, S., Abudalfa, S., El-Haj, M., Abdelali, A., Jarrar, M., Durrani, N., Sajjad, H., & Adeeba, F. (2026). AbjadGenEval: Abjad AI Generated Text Detection Shared Task for Languages Using Arabic Script at AbjadNLP 2026. In M. El-Haj, M. El-Haj, P. Rayson, M. Jarrar, I. Ezeani, S. Ezzini, S. Ahmadi, A. H. Haddad, C. Amol, A. Abdelali, & S. Abudalfa (Eds.), EACL 2026 - 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, AbjadNLP 2026 (pp. 530-537). (EACL 2026 - 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, AbjadNLP 2026). Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL). https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2026.abjadnlp-1.68

Ezzini, Saad ; Ahmad, Irfan ; Chafik, Salmane et al. / AbjadGenEval : Abjad AI Generated Text Detection Shared Task for Languages Using Arabic Script at AbjadNLP 2026. EACL 2026 - 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, AbjadNLP 2026. editor / Mo El-Haj ; Mo El-Haj ; Paul Rayson ; Mustafa Jarrar ; Ignatius Ezeani ; Saad Ezzini ; Sina Ahmadi ; Amal Haddad Haddad ; Cynthia Amol ; Ahmad Abdelali ; Shadi Abudalfa. Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2026. pp. 530-537 (EACL 2026 - 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, AbjadNLP 2026).

@inproceedings{54cdb9927dab4d6dbe0561cdb417b6cd,

title = "AbjadGenEval: Abjad AI Generated Text Detection Shared Task for Languages Using Arabic Script at AbjadNLP 2026",

abstract = "We present the findings of the AbjadGenEval shared task, organized as part of the AbjadNLP workshop at EACL 2026, which benchmarks AI-generated text detection for Arabic-script languages. Extending beyond Arabic to include Urdu, the task serves as a binary classification platform distinguishing human-written from AI-generated news articles produced by varied LLMs (e.g., GPT, Gemini). Twenty teams participated, with top systems achieving F1 scores of 0.93 for Arabic and 0.89 for Urdu. The results highlight the dominance of multilingual transformers-specifically XLM-RoBERTa and DeBERTa-v3-and reveal significant challenges in cross-domain generalization, where naive data augmentation often yielded diminishing returns. This shared task establishes a robust baseline for authenticating content in the Abjad ecosystem.",

author = "Saad Ezzini and Irfan Ahmad and Salmane Chafik and Shadi Abudalfa and Mo El-Haj and Ahmed Abdelali and Mustafa Jarrar and Nadir Durrani and Hassan Sajjad and Farah Adeeba",

note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2026 Association for Computational Linguistics.; 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, AbjadNLP 2026 ; Conference date: 28-03-2026",

year = "2026",

doi = "10.18653/v1/2026.abjadnlp-1.68",

language = "English",

series = "EACL 2026 - 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, AbjadNLP 2026",

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pages = "530--537",

editor = "Mo El-Haj and Mo El-Haj and Paul Rayson and Mustafa Jarrar and Ignatius Ezeani and Saad Ezzini and Sina Ahmadi and Haddad, \{Amal Haddad\} and Cynthia Amol and Ahmad Abdelali and Shadi Abudalfa",

booktitle = "EACL 2026 - 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, AbjadNLP 2026",

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Ezzini, S , Ahmad, I, Chafik, S, Abudalfa, S, El-Haj, M, Abdelali, A, Jarrar, M, Durrani, N, Sajjad, H & Adeeba, F 2026, AbjadGenEval: Abjad AI Generated Text Detection Shared Task for Languages Using Arabic Script at AbjadNLP 2026. in M El-Haj, M El-Haj, P Rayson, M Jarrar, I Ezeani, S Ezzini, S Ahmadi, AH Haddad, C Amol, A Abdelali & S Abudalfa (eds), EACL 2026 - 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, AbjadNLP 2026. EACL 2026 - 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, AbjadNLP 2026, Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), pp. 530-537, 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, AbjadNLP 2026, Rabat, Morocco, 28/03/26. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2026.abjadnlp-1.68

AbjadGenEval: Abjad AI Generated Text Detection Shared Task for Languages Using Arabic Script at AbjadNLP 2026. / Ezzini, Saad ; Ahmad, Irfan; Chafik, Salmane et al.
EACL 2026 - 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, AbjadNLP 2026. ed. / Mo El-Haj; Mo El-Haj; Paul Rayson; Mustafa Jarrar; Ignatius Ezeani; Saad Ezzini; Sina Ahmadi; Amal Haddad Haddad; Cynthia Amol; Ahmad Abdelali; Shadi Abudalfa. Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2026. p. 530-537 (EACL 2026 - 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, AbjadNLP 2026).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

TY - GEN

T1 - AbjadGenEval

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AU - Ezzini, Saad

AU - Ahmad, Irfan

AU - Chafik, Salmane

AU - Abudalfa, Shadi

AU - El-Haj, Mo

AU - Abdelali, Ahmed

AU - Jarrar, Mustafa

AU - Durrani, Nadir

AU - Sajjad, Hassan

AU - Adeeba, Farah

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N2 - We present the findings of the AbjadGenEval shared task, organized as part of the AbjadNLP workshop at EACL 2026, which benchmarks AI-generated text detection for Arabic-script languages. Extending beyond Arabic to include Urdu, the task serves as a binary classification platform distinguishing human-written from AI-generated news articles produced by varied LLMs (e.g., GPT, Gemini). Twenty teams participated, with top systems achieving F1 scores of 0.93 for Arabic and 0.89 for Urdu. The results highlight the dominance of multilingual transformers-specifically XLM-RoBERTa and DeBERTa-v3-and reveal significant challenges in cross-domain generalization, where naive data augmentation often yielded diminishing returns. This shared task establishes a robust baseline for authenticating content in the Abjad ecosystem.

AB - We present the findings of the AbjadGenEval shared task, organized as part of the AbjadNLP workshop at EACL 2026, which benchmarks AI-generated text detection for Arabic-script languages. Extending beyond Arabic to include Urdu, the task serves as a binary classification platform distinguishing human-written from AI-generated news articles produced by varied LLMs (e.g., GPT, Gemini). Twenty teams participated, with top systems achieving F1 scores of 0.93 for Arabic and 0.89 for Urdu. The results highlight the dominance of multilingual transformers-specifically XLM-RoBERTa and DeBERTa-v3-and reveal significant challenges in cross-domain generalization, where naive data augmentation often yielded diminishing returns. This shared task establishes a robust baseline for authenticating content in the Abjad ecosystem.

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M3 - Conference contribution

AN - SCOPUS:105040744450

T3 - EACL 2026 - 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, AbjadNLP 2026

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A2 - Ezeani, Ignatius

A2 - Ezzini, Saad

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A2 - Amol, Cynthia

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PB - Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)

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Ezzini S , Ahmad I, Chafik S, Abudalfa S, El-Haj M, Abdelali A et al. AbjadGenEval: Abjad AI Generated Text Detection Shared Task for Languages Using Arabic Script at AbjadNLP 2026. In El-Haj M, El-Haj M, Rayson P, Jarrar M, Ezeani I, Ezzini S, Ahmadi S, Haddad AH, Amol C, Abdelali A, Abudalfa S, editors, EACL 2026 - 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, AbjadNLP 2026. Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL). 2026. p. 530-537. (EACL 2026 - 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script, AbjadNLP 2026). doi: 10.18653/v1/2026.abjadnlp-1.68

AbjadGenEval: Abjad AI Generated Text Detection Shared Task for Languages Using Arabic Script at AbjadNLP 2026

Abstract

Publication series

Conference

Bibliographical note

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

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