Advice for students regarding Turnitin and AI writing detection
Turnitin’s artificial intelligence (AI) writing detection tool is accessible to staff. The tool works on text produced in English and includes:
- Writing detection indicators (percentages of text predicted to be AI-generated or AI-paraphrased)
- A report (highlighted text in the submission that maps to these percentages)
Turnitin does not make the AI writing detection indicator or the report visible to students, so even if your instructor has set it to display your similarity report, the AI writing report will not be included.
However, if there are any concerns about your work, your instructor can share a pdf copy of the report with you.
How reliable is the tool?
The percentage score generated by the tool represents the amount of text that it calculates as 98% or more likely to have been generated or paraphrased by AI.
It is important to remember that AI detectors are highly variable in their accuracy because they use different methods and calculations to detect AI writing.
Free tools on the internet do not use the same methods as the Turnitin tool and some can be very inaccurate. Many are aimed at exploiting student anxieties and will claim to have detected AI in wholly human-written work so that they can sell you ‘humaniser’ tools. These usually use AI and are often picked up by the University’s detector tool.
Putting your work into any free tool on the internet also means you give away your intellectual property – the business model of these companies may involve them using your work for other purposes, such as training their own AI models, or selling to other students. This is a breach of academic integrity, and could result in a misconduct investigation.
What will the University do if the tool reports a high score for submitted work?
As with the similarity report generated by Turnitin, the result of the AI writing detector tool is a prompt for further investigation.
Should there be a suspicion that part or all of your submitted assessment has been produced using generative AI, you may be asked to explain your essay and argument (how you developed the argument, what sources you used, how you reached the conclusion you did), or to provide drafts or notes of early versions of the assessment.
Being asked to discuss or explain components of your assessment task is not an allegation of academic misconduct. These discussions are informal and exploratory, and may form part of the process used to identify or rule out any potential breaches of academic integrity.
Importantly, an AI writing detection report alone is not sufficient evidence for an allegation. You are not required to participate in or attend a discussion if you choose not to. Further information about what it means to be asked to discuss your work is available on the UMSU website.
When is it OK to use AI tools?
The acceptable use of AI will vary across disciplines, subjects, and assessment tasks. Your subject coordinator will provide this information, but it is your responsibility to check the assessment guidelines and relevant policies, and to understand what is expected of you. Resources on academic integrity are available to you through your subject’s LMS site, Academic Skills, and the Library.
If an assessment task does permit the use of AI tools and technologies in the preparation of the submission, this usage must be appropriately acknowledged and cited in accordance with the Assessment and Results Policy (MPF1326).
If an assessment task does not permit the use of such tools, or if you use such tools in the preparation of an assessment submission without acknowledgement, this is academic misconduct. In accordance with the Student Academic Integrity Policy (MPF1310), any student who commits academic misconduct is subject to the penalties outlined in the Schedule of Student Academic Misconduct Penalties.
As other tools to detect the use of AI become available, the University will consider adopting their use. Work submitted for assessment is subject to checking through these tools at any stage. This includes in the years following graduation, and the University has the right to amend marks or rescind degrees should academic misconduct be found at any stage.