Think you can get a 1st on your essay? Think again…

We’ve all heard of ChatGPT — an AI bot that’s capable of giving you the information you need on a specific topic. Simply type in your question, let the beep-boop noises commence and you’ll be greeted with the information you need. Various AI bots like this exist, and both companies and students alike are using them to complete tasks. 

While it’s super efficient for getting an in-depth explanation in simple English, it’s also blurring the lines between content depth and plagiarism. Both of which are huge concerns for teachers and lecturers marking the work that’s submitted.

Assignment submission tool Turninit is making a huge effort to crack down on these things, by developing its own AI to tell whether a student has used an AI bot to write their content. Let’s dig into how it works, and what this could mean for students using the platform.

What is this new plagiarism-catching AI tool?

David Adamson here, explains how the new tool will work. They actively go in and tweak the work on Turnitin to show just how the AI will pick up on original vs AI-generated content. As you can see, it can detect where in the essay that an AI tool was used to write specific parts of it. 

We’re not technical experts and can’t fully explain the inner workings of this new AI, but all we can say is this is pretty groundbreaking stuff. It’s something students need to be aware of when writing their essays. If they get flagged for a certain percentage of “plagiarism”, then this will cause some serious issues for your grades further down the line.

According to The Tab, Turnitin is hoping to roll out this new AI detection tool soon, but it’s still currently in its testing phase. Annie Chechitelli, Chief Product Officer at Turnitin, said: “Our model has been trained specifically on academic writing sourced from a comprehensive database, as opposed to solely publicly available content. As a result, Turnitin is more tuned to finding instances of potential dishonesty in student assignments.”

Are students really using AI tools to complete their assignments?

There’s no doubt about it. In fact, Pieter Snepvangers of The Tab recently got ChatGPT to write their essay to see what result they’d get from a Russell Group university. They found that the tool could produce a 2,000-word essay on a subject surrounding social policy.

It ended up getting 53%, which is roughly a 2:2 (depending on what institution you attend), and cited that the lecturer who marked the essay found it to be reflective of a “lazy” student’s approach to an essay.

But are unis officially enforcing rules around AI tools?

It’s been reported that unis across the country have recently made it an academic offence to use ChatGPT on assignments. Bournemouth University is one of them. The BU official statement has told students that if all or part of an essay was detected as having been developed by an AI software, it would constitute as an academic offence. The same has been reiterated in a statement by Queen Mary University of London too.

It’s clear that universities are beginning to crack down on the use of AI bots, so we highly advise you to think twice before using one to write your essays. Have you been guilty of using ChatGPT and the like? We highly recommend keeping abreast of how this can affect your grades, particularly if your uni roles out new rules. Sign up for Student Beans to keep on top of the latest news, and follow the Student Beans Instagram for more information like this.