“My Best Friend Cheats With ChatGPT On Every Assignment & I Don’t Know What To Do”

ChatGPT is the viral AI chatbot causing chaos across university campuses worldwide.

Since its launch, ChatGPT has seen huge growth worldwide with uni students, school students, professional writers and even those on Tinder looking for help generating chat up lines using it as part of their day-to-day lives. Within the first two months of launch, ChatGPT had over 100 million active users and has more than 13 million visitors daily.

With the demand for AI growing, more and more people are curious about how ChatGPT can help them improve their everyday writing skills. Universities are no strangers to the rise in popularity with many sending out emails to students warning them what will happen if they use an AI bot to help them write their coursework or dissertations. Turnitin, the software used to detect plagiarism in university coursework has also been adapted to be able to detect if you’ve used ChatGPT, but many students are still finding ways around this and trying it out anyway.

What is ChatGPT?

So, first things first, what is ChatGPT and what can it actually do?

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot that can generate human-like conversations within seconds. However, it’s not just a tool that can be used for conversation, as the incredibly intelligent AI can do a LOT of things to an incredibly high standard that the average person may not be able to. Some of the things you can do with it include writing and debugging computer programmes, composing music, answering test questions, writing essays and coursework to a distinction level, writing poetry, or even coming up with genius chat-up lines.

In short, for anything you may struggle with writing, ChatGPT can do it for you and probably do a better job. For students, ChatGPT can be used to write subheadings, chapter titles and even whole paragraphs of text at a high, and in many cases undetectable level. Of course, universities have strict rules and policies when it comes to plagiarism, but this does raise the question, is it really plagiarism if you’re not stealing it from a real person?

“My best friend is cheating using ChatGPT…what do I do?”

We spoke to some of our followers about ChatGPT and if they had used it, and one of our Instagram followers (who wishes to remain anonymous for obvious reasons) confessed that their best friend has been cheating by using AI chatbots.

Our follower said “My best friend uses this website where she will copy and paste some sentences from a source and it will reword it for her so it doesn’t pick up as plagiarism. She’s done it for her last 2 assignments and received distinctions on both…she knows it’s wrong but does it because it saves her lots of time, I’m not sure what to do.”

Of course, this is a tricky situation. On the one hand, many students are clearly cheating using ChatGPT or similar platforms or are open to doing so, while on the other hand, many students recognise that this is a risky move and wouldn’t do it themselves.

Taking credit for someone else’s work is plagiarism, and getting a chatbot to write it for you is essentially the same thing. Getting a distinction, a first or even passing your entire degree based on assignments you handed in that were written by ChatGPT is something that could be very, very likely in the future and clearly, this is a huge test for students’ moral compasses.

Our Instagram follower explained that they’re the only person who knows that their friend is cheating which has left them wondering if they have the responsibility to tell –– after all, is it really fair for one student to be getting top marks if they didn’t really earn it? What does this mean for other students who are writing their work entirely on their own and doing well, but are doing second best to those who are cheating?

Plus, it blurs the lines too when you’re discussing your results with your friends, how do you know who is cheating and who isn’t, and who is deserving of their grades? This could be disheartening to students who aren’t cheating and tried really hard, to see other students excel above them time and time again –– which is purely because they’re using ChatGPT.

@studentbeans An investigation by The Tab shares the top 8 Russell Group unis who have used ChatGPT the most in December and January👀 #studentlife #studentproblems #chatgpt #dissertation #ai #turnitin #chatgptai #studyhacks #essayhacks #studentopinions #studenttok ♬ space song – favsoundds

Can I get away with using ChatGPT?

If you’re tempted to try using ChatGPT to do your uni work, you’re probably wondering how easy it is to use it and go undetected. Even though Turnitin can now be used to pick up if you’ve used ChatGPT, it doesn’t always mean it will pick anything up, because the AI is so advanced and is becoming more and more advanced each day.

Plagiarism and cheating can get you kicked out of university, so if you’re debating using it to cheat, you have to really evaluate if it’s actually worth it. After all, you came to uni to get a degree and you knew you were signing up for hard work–– putting in the work no matter how hard it can be will always be the right thing to do over cheating.

Yet, it does seem like a lot of students are getting away with it and many of our followers also confessed to using it and getting away with it every time.

Our anonymous Instagram follower shared that while they’re sceptical about the popularity and rise of ChatGPT, paying other people to do your assignments has always been very popular at their uni. However, they admitted they would never do this themselves as they wouldn’t feel proud or get the satisfaction out of receiving a good grade.

They added “knowing that people are cheating and getting higher grades does really infuriate me that my hard work is getting less recognition than someone who’s cheated. I think most people who do it though aren’t doing it out of laziness, they’re doing it out of desperation.”

@studentbeans Unis where you can still use ChatGPT? 👀 Don’t take our word for it 😬 #dissertation #essayhack #Ai #studentproblems #unitok #unilibrary #studyhacks #chatgpt #turnitin #plagerisim ♬ sonido original – letipixels

Can ChatGPT be a good thing?

On the flip side, some of our followers admitted that they had used ChatGPT, or had considered using it to help them with their university work but not to necessarily cheat. One of our followers said that they had used it to help reach a word count and to help with areas that they were stuck on and needed some guidance, while for students with dyslexia, it could be a massive help in improving their overall language skills and spelling without actually cheating.

Many UK universities have actually approved the use of ChatGPT for research purposes and helping to elevate students’ existing work, without actually cheating or plagiarising. However, the use of ChatGPT remains a controversial debate, with many arguing that regardless of the potential benefits, using it would still lead to academic misconduct.

Should I use ChatGPT?

Well, this one is up to you. ChatGPT has dominated the news recently and caused a buzz across university campuses and with many students successfully using it and getting away with it, we know how tempting this may sound.

While there are certainly some great benefits to ChatGPT, plagiarism is something that universities take very seriously and if you are considering using ChatGPT in a way that you know is cheating this could have serious consequences for your future. We know how important getting a degree is to you, otherwise, you wouldn’t be in uni in the first place and jeopardising your degree to try ChatGPT is certainly very risky. If this is a risk you’re willing to take, ChatGPT could definitely help you out if you’re struggling but it’s a risk that could cost you your future too.

For more advice about studying, money, hacks and freebies check out the rest of our blog content for tips and advice.