Fight Magic with Magic? Turnitin Launches AI Detection to Crack Down on ChatGPT Cheating — but USyd Pours Cold Water on It

Turnitin Launches AI Detection to Crack Down on ChatGPT Cheating

If you’re studying in Australia, you’ll be no stranger to Turnitin. This plagiarism-detection giant is now rolling out an AI detection feature, aiming to use the technology to detect academic-integrity breaches such as ChatGPT use.

For now the technology is still in its rollout phase, and universities partnered with Turnitin can choose voluntarily whether to add the service. However, many Australian universities, including the University of Sydney, have poured cold water on the technology and chosen not to use Turnitin’s enhanced feature.

A University of Sydney spokesperson said the university is “currently investigating Turnitin’s new AI detection feature”.

USyd Students’ Representative Council president Lia Perkins said that Turnitin’s new feature could expose students to a time-consuming and laborious investigation process because of false positives.

“USyd should focus on teaching and support to prevent the erosion of academic integrity, and on teaching students how to use new technology as a tool rather than as a substitute for learning academic skills.”

That said, many universities around the world are using this Turnitin feature to check whether students’ assignments are original. Turnitin says this enhanced AI detection feature can distinguish AI-generated work from human writing.

Turnitin says the technology has a very low false-positive rate, and that it is “continually evolving” to keep up with the growing sophistication of AI-generation tools.

In contrast to Turnitin’s “fight magic with magic” approach, USyd’s medical school recently told students that they are among the cohort permitted to use the AI program ChatGPT to write essays, and that their very first S1 assignment is to be completed using ChatGPT.

Martin Brown, a tutor on the medical-school course Contemporary Medical Challenges, and his colleagues feel that it is impossible to ignore the existence of ChatGPT, so they may as well make it part of the course.

For this assignment, which requires the use of ChatGPT, the 180 students in the class are asked to pose a question about a contemporary medical challenge and have ChatGPT write an article on it. Students are then asked to read the AI-written essay and edit it again, observe the changes before and after, and submit the final version.

Martin Brown said the assignment is designed to test students’ judgement and creativity — skills they will need throughout their careers — rather than simply collating information.

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