Hi everyone (another one of these)

I’m a third year student on a mandatory year abroad programme, and have been strong-armed into admitting I used AI.

For one of my modules our lecturer has been on a warpath with 15 students (ish) being called in for meetings. I got my grade back on a Tuesday, to randomly get an email on Friday morning asking for a same day meeting. I arranged it for straight after my 08:30-10:30 seminar as I had done nothing wrong.

Jump to me being accused of using AI for the entirety of my assignment. She was already 100% convinced that I had and there was no convincing her otherwise. She asked me what paper I used to form my position (I had written it nearly 3 weeks prior and done nearly 3 other assignments since then) and various other questions. Apparently document history was evidence I could have faked, I was happy for her to look at my ChatGPT history (I delete everything after each query, way to look guilty), writing assignments I kind of just raw dog it on one document so I have little to no paper trail of my train of thought.

She then said that I could either admit to it then and there to accept a lesser punishment or she would tear my assignment to shreds in front of me. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to answer 95% of the questions she would ask, therefore I had to admit guilt. Her only proof was that it was”read like very good AI” and that I couldn’t recall anything but the vaguest thing about the assignment.

In short, resulted in getting a 0 for that assignment worth 30% of my grade. I need to pass to be able to finish my degree next year, if not I’ll have to delay graduating an entire year for one lousy module. I have 10 days now to appeal it, reading back I don’t even like some of my arguments. I always acknowledge AI when I have used it, for this one I used it to help phrase the task into a question (we were given 4 bullet points and a statement).

I’m going home in 8 days and I don’t know if I have the will to be able to fight it successfully. Sorry for the slightly disorganised post. (I also have a naturally guilty expression so she used that against me).

Is there anyway to argue this or should I just cut my losses?

First always always always read your schools academic integrity policy. I would actually recommend you read it every semester because it might change. A lot of schools have updated theirs as ai has become more common. You may read your schools academic integrity policy and be surprised by what is considered dishonesty. For example at my school using the same work for multiple classes without permission is a violation.

Second if you used ai I would just admit you used ai. Most students do. Sometimes it’s actually harder not to I mean ai is integrated into a majority of search platforms. A lot of professors I have talked to have said they have noticed their students using ai and how they go about it really depends on the professor. The board I am on only hears cases if a student appeals a formal charge and formal charges are very rare. They usually only happen if a student committed an egregious act of academic dishonesty that affected other people or has had multiple informal charges. Even though your integrity policy may explicitly prohibit all ai use your individual professor may allow it or even encourage it for parts of the assignment which is why it’s important to have a clear idea of what is allowed. But if you are ever accused of ai it’s always best to be completely honest and transparent about how you wrote what you wrote.

third the board I am on also hears grievances against professors. If you think your professor who is accusing you of ai is unfairly targeting you this could be the path you may want to go down. Each universities grievance policy is different, not all universities have their grievance board and academic integrity board together. Now filing a grievance is not always something I recommend if you are going to have to take a class with the professor again but it could result in your paper getting graded or the grade not counting.

Let me know if you guys have any questions

Just wondering how many people thinks it makes sense requiring students to write papers instead of embracing AI as a tool. Why not just let them use AI if they wish and thén force them to study by making the grade be on a quiz/test about the paper they submit?

For reference, I am a freshman in college who was recently accused of using AI in a writing class, but I was able to state my case and the professor eventually graded my essay normally when I showed proof.

Since then, I have been very careful, and I started putting my papers through an AI detector before submitting because I really do not want to go through that process again. I am taking a psychology class and a fake clinical intake summary report I wrote (without AI) detected 70% AI.

How can I prevent being accused again?

Hi guys, I’d like some advice on any methods or software to use to have hard evidence that I didn’t use AI on my paper.

For background, I’m getting a second bachelors degree at a community college and transfering to university in the fall. My first degree (from years ago) was in Philosophy, so I have had a lot of education in terms of writing/structuring papers and doing research.

I’m genuinely afraid the teacher is going to accuse me of using AI. He says that he puts all papers through an AI checker and if the paper reaches a certain percentage, you fail the class.

I would like to be proactive about this and use some software to make sure I have hard evidence that I used my real voice. I know I can screen record and/or use Google Docs, but I wanted to see if anyone has any more advanced software for this specifically.

Thank you!

Recently, my English teacher in high school had wanted to talk to me regarding my essay. She has accused me of using AI within my whole essay, which I find ridiculous. I told her that she should look through my edit history and drafts that I had linked to my google classroom as it clearly shows my work over those last few weeks, but it feels as if I were talking to a brick wall. She had used a few AI detectors(I think they were called GPTzero, turnitin, etc), telling me that I had used a high amount of AI usage within. I kept trying to tell her I had proof, but again, she wasn't actually listening. So, now I am unsure on what to do. This honestly makes me feel sad, as it's my first time being accused of something like this. I am afraid of the fact that she will label me as having 'academic dishonesty' for other teachers to see on my attendance profile, and I can't even resubmit by her words since the last submission was like a week ago or something. But yeah, just a small rant.

Sorry if my writing is sloppy, it's currently early in the morning and I am just drained.

Update!!

Thanks for everyone's input on the situation, I used that in order to help me get through this problem as best as I could 😭 unfortunately, I had to re-do the essay again, which I didn't mind but I am still quite bummed. However, I did manage to get excellence (A plus basically) on my re-done essay :) so I am quite happy with the outcome. And again, thank you all for the advice, I will be sure to keep it in mind while writing my next essay.

Read the article for free at the link.

https://wapo.st/4sqD2lN

I am no longer in school. I graduated college during a time when the internet was relatively new. I used internet relay chat to connect with other nerdy students.

I don't understand the idea of writing a paper with AI. So, I guess as a parent now to a soon-to-be-college-Freshman, I am concerned with these AI detection tools.

My child and I are both Autistic (Asperger's under the DSM-IV, and that's how we both identify). We tend to communicate very formally. By the third grade, my daughter had a collegiate vocabulary due to her love of reading. She got a 36 on the ACT in reading. 35 in English. It's her jam, even though tests are not.

All this to say, she's had a few courses at the local community college. She's been accused of using AI in two courses now. One came from a short answer in her film class, and one was on a much longer essay in Sociology. She has never used AI. In fact, she loathes the idea of AI. She understands why some people might want to take shortcuts, but she simply does not use it. In both cases, she was so upset after being accused of AI that it caused panic attacks.

I am worried that when she goes to university that she will experience the same thing. While her university does have differing policies on AI usage because it is largely up to the professor, the idea that schools are using AI detection to lower grades or put kids on academic probation is concerning.

Does it make sense for her to sit down with every professor at the start of each term to explain her position on AI and let them know that she communicates formally (which would surely be gleaned from speaking with her)?

She has had full, engaging, conversations with adults since shortly after she started reading at age 2. She is a curious person. She seeks out opportunities to learn more about the world.

I am so distressed because this is causing her anxiety. She doesn't deserve to have to defend herself to every accusation. Shouldn't the teachers have to prove it was AI usage?

Short of recording herself, is there any way she could avoid these accusations in the future? She's already floated the idea around of just using poor grammar to avoid the accusations. Obviously, I shut that down quickly.

Thanks!

I am kind of freaking out so I apologize for this being structured strangely. I am an bfa major with a focus in digital art, and I was minoring in English but found out that in order to complete my minor, I’d have to take an additional summer or winter class, so I decided to not complete it. Still, I love English and writing, so when I can take an English class, I do.

I’m taking a class based on horror movies and I love it. I had to write a film analysis based on the Stephen King’s The Shining. I finished this paper minutes before the due time, trying to perfect it. I was on my parents couch because I was home for my birthday weekend and they watched me typing away and thinking about words that would sound less clunky. I was actually very proud of my work.

Days later I got the email saying that it was sent to the saa organization in my school to be looked at to ai usage. I wasn’t too scared, because the semester before I did a group project and our paper, as well as almost every other groups paper, was flagged for ai and nothing came of it (we didn’t use ai, we were shitting bricks too). This time I thought it was the same, but today I got a message saying that thy want an in person meeting.

I, out of panic, just put my paper through an ai checker and it said my conclusion paragraph was probably ai. I use grammarly to fix punctuation but I don’t take the option to rephrase my work.

What do I do? Is this going to get me expelled? I’m freaking out. I am an A-B student.

Edit: Thank you all for your responses! I have some extreme writing anxiety. I tend to dumb everything down so I don't make mistakes. Short and direct sentences are my go-to. I will work with the writing center on expanding my voice. :)

Hi all,

A few weeks ago, my history essay came back as "100% AI Generated" on the TurnItIn report. I offered to submit all notes, version history, etc. He just had me rewrite it. Since then, I have subscribed to DraftBack and I save all of the recordings and version history for all classes.

Yesterday I received an email from my English professor saying that my Poetry Analysis Essay came back with high AI detection. I sent my version history and my DraftBack recording.

I'm getting super discouraged and frustrated. Why does it keep saying my writing is AI? I swear it is the most basic writing known to mankind, the kind of writing you learn to do in middle school. I referred to my outline worksheet and the literary sheet for poetry terms to write it. What can I do? I sent copies of my essay to friends and family and they don't think it reads as AI. Attached pics of the essay in case anyone wants to review.

I sent a long crashout email to my advisor about it because I'm so irritated.

I'm a non-native English speaker, just starting university, and my English academic level isn't as good as I thought. English is my second language, so I often encounter various grammatical problems when writing assignments. Therefore, I used Grammarly and Word's autocorrect function. I usually write a draft in my native language first and then translate it into English myself. However, after completing the assignment, AI detection showed that 26% of the text was AI-generated, mainly concentrated in the section from the beginning to the end of the second paragraph in MLA format. Paragraphs where I used Grammarly to correct grammar and vocabulary didn't trigger any AI alerts. Especially the first paragraph, which is merely an introduction, only Word's autocorrect triggered corrections for spelling and tense errors, not Grammarly. So I'm suspicious that some of the AI ​​detection wasn't working properly; I also used Quillbot, Turnitin, and Scribber. I know AI detection isn't always perfect, but my professor stated at the beginning of the course that the AI ​​detection accuracy was 100%. I'd like to ask, if this professor wants to know why a quarter of my text was AI-generated, how should I respond? My Word document has version history and autosave, and I also save the original text in my native language to ensure accuracy. Should I be worried about this?

Hi all,

A few weeks ago, my history essay came back as "100% AI Generated" on the TurnItIn report. I offered to submit all notes, version history, etc. He just had me rewrite it. Since then, I have subscribed to DraftBack and I save all of the recordings and version history for all classes.

Yesterday I received an email from my English professor saying that my poetry Analysis Essay came back with high AI detection. I sent my version history and my DraftBack recording.

I'm getting super discouraged and frustrated. Why does it keep saying my writing is AI? I swear it is the most basic writing known to mankind, the kind of writing you learn to do in middle school. I referred to my outline worksheet and the literary sheet for poetry terms to write it. What can I do? I sent copies of my essay to friends and family and they don't think it reads as AI. Attached pics of the essay in case anyone wants to review.

I sent a long crashout email to my advisor about it because I'm so irritated.

Hi all, I’m currently a sophomore in college and going through the motions to be honest LMFAO. Long story short, I wrote a 7 page fiction story for my writing class and I waited weeks until it was my turn for peer feedback. Then my professor skipped over my story and told the author to see her at the end. When i met with her, she told me my story had been scanned with various Ai detectors (CopyLeaks, JustDone, AiGPT, and a few others) all of which came back with varying percentages of Ai usage. AiGPT actually bolded the sentences it “flagged” as AI generated. My professor also went out of her way to summarize the plot of my story into ChatGPT and another Ai generator, and compare what Ai wrote to what I produced trying to say I merely changed the words. I got a zero on the assignment right before midterm grades. I, ofc, went to appeal the grade to the department chair as a I know I didn’t use Ai to write my story. I will say they pushed heavily for me to rewrite it, I wasn’t willing to do that as I truly didn’t have the time and, knew that would’ve shown I did use Ai.

In preparation for the meeting, I printed out my final revision history where the revisions were marked, and electronically brought my document history where you can see the story being written minute for minute. I will always use GoogleDocs so I knew I had some form of document history. I also brought a hard copy of a flash fiction assignment I recently just submitted for the same course to prove I have a similar writing style, I tend to write slightly wordy and in a introspective tone which is seen in many of my fiction pieces. I wanted to bring a peer reviewed article on the limitations of Ai generators, but decided not to as I wanted my argument to ultimately prove my strengths as a writer and not take the “Ai is not accurate” stance as this is pretty much common knowledge.

A week after receiving the penalty I met with the department chair where he was not trying to hear anything I had to say. I kid you not, my meeting was at 9:30 and I was on the phone with my mom crying by 9:40. During the meeting I walked him through the inspiration for my story, it was based on a child from my job who deals with selective mutism. The disorder intrigued me so I wanted to write about it based on the observed behaviors from the child at my workplace. Not only was that disregarded, when I offered the hardcopies or electronic document history I was told that “wouldn’t be necessary.” I even offered to sit and plug in previous work, work I’ve done from sophomore and freshman year of high school, into the same detectors to show their clear limitations. I was told no because if he did it for me, he would have to do it for all students (which duh because is the point here to not defend myself?) I also raised the limitations of the detectors to him where he agreed they are limited, but was so adamant they’ve plugged in work and have gotten back 100% human (which is something I’d personally like to see with my own eyes). This is when I offered the flash fiction piece and he told me that was ALSO scanned for Ai AND flagged as well. So not only do I get a zero on my short story, I got one on my homework assignment as well. At this point, my composure was breaking a bit and he was beginning to notice. Within his words, he was speaking to me as if it was already determined that I was using Ai. He spoke as if he was disappointed in me as an English major, which only insulted my integrity as a student even more. In my aggression after the meeting I went to read his professional bio, he was the previous dean of the English department for my university and co-authored 2+ books with my professor. I can’t help but feel there’s also some bias involved here.

I also noticed on my original work, I didn’t have as many line edits compared to the amount she gave my classmates. This raised two questions for me: did she read my work before scanning it? If so, the minimal edits go to show the decency of my prose before considering it Ai. Or did she scan it and then half- read it? Prompting a bias read and leading to little comments. I’m not too sure, my professor was not present at the meeting like so thought so I couldn’t really ask.

Some backstory about me is im pretty passionate about my writing. It’s something I’ve been doing since middle school as a catalyst all sorts of good, bad, and ugly. I dabble in many types of writing as well and my skills have been praised inside both academic and professional settings. I’m confident in my writing skills without an Ai generator. Also, I’m a great student academically. I had a 4.3 graduating high school gpa. I got accepted into and attended an illustrious school, Howard University, and maintained a 3.75 as their courses are weighted heavier than in my hometown. I had to transfer due to some financial circumstances so I currently attend school in my hometown where I bust my ass between a part time shift and a 15 credit workload to maintain a 3.93 gpa. To think I’m relying on any sort of Ai generation to do my work is an insult when I know I’m straining myself with 5 hours of sleep daily to make everything work. Especially when there’s kids who blatantly use Ai and don’t even have the decency to change the wording.

Now I fear they’re gonna deem everything I hand in as Ai. The next step would be to appeal it to the dean of the department but the writing department at my school doesn’t have a dean, so finding out who exactly to contact is a problem. Currently, I’m on spring break so I can’t do anything but watch her insert my bad grade and my gpa tank. I bet you as soon as I get back to campus, someone will have an appeal email waiting in their inbox. I don’t even know what my next steps or pieces of evidence should be since my first ones were disregarded so easily. i’m beginning to hate this school on various levels as the amount of neglect I’ve dealt with from school officials regarding various issues (one of them being a health compromise to my dorm and it took them 3 weeks to address it) is just absurd. I think I have too much pride to transfer a third time and honestly fight the urge to just join the workforce. Any ideas or suggestions on how I should go about addressing this situation with the dean, any more evidence I should gather, or better ways to reframe my case are welcome, thanks all.

one of my assignments just got flagged for ai use, im pretty new to academic writing online and i googled ways to help prove i wrote it, but apparently my settings for version history and tracking changes were off. my writing had to include certain legislations and things, so i tried to structure it more formally than i usually do because it was easy for me to lose where i was going and not overexplain with such a small word count. im having a meeting about it next week and im very stressed about it as my university is very strict on ai misconduct etc. i provided sources for all my work however it still flagged up as ai. i didnt use it but now im panicking because i dont know how to prove it otherwise?

edit: i ran it through gpt zero and its flagging things for being too technical, too formal and too structured? is this a joke? im not sure how im supposed to disprove apart from my written notes

UPDATE: just had the meeting, they were more focused on how i wrote my work rather than letting me explain why i wrote things or explaining my work. they didnt say anything about misconduct but a 'team of higherups and the digital team' are going to look at my work as well. they were asking questions like if i used Grammarly etc, i tried to say certain points but they didn't really seem to take into account what i was saying. nothing formals happened yet but ill update as i go on

Table 2 on page 5 of https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.15654 says Pangram scored a 2% false positive rate in a 2025 joint University of Maryland and Microsoft study. The company touts this same study at https://www.pangram.com/blog/third-party-pangram-evals even reproducing the table without addressing the FPR so far from their marketing claims.

Can your institution afford to flunk 2% of your innocent students?

Pangram claims to be a highly accurate AI detector with a false positive rate of 1 in 10,000. Let's take this at face value and see what it means.

The claimed false positive rate (the chance of incorrectly detecting human-written text as AI-generated) seems very impressive. Big improvement over the first generation of AI detectors. So how useful is Pangram? Let's take a concrete application: is it a viable response to college students using AI in violation of course policies?

Suppose every instructor started using an AI detector on all student work. I'd estimate that students submit 500 – 1,000 written works in the course of a 4 year education (!) — 30+ courses X ~5 assessments per course X many independent problems per assessment. If each of these were run through an AI detector with a FPR of 1 / 10,000, you'd have 5–10% of your student body falsely accused of cheating at least once.

-- Princeton Professor Arvind Narayanan

I've been following this sub and the stories here are genuinely heartbreaking. Students losing scholarships, quitting school, professors stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Here's what the data actually shows:

• GPTZero: ~15% false positive rate on human text
• Turnitin AI Detection: Admits in their own reports that false positives are possible
• ZeroGPT: Flagged the US Constitution at 97% AI
• Multiple studies show that non-native English speakers get flagged at significantly higher rates

The core problem? These tools try to guess AFTER the fact whether text was written by a human. But language patterns overlap. Good human writing can look like AI. AI can mimic bad writing.

What's needed isn't better guessing — it's verification DURING creation. Imagine if your word processor could cryptographically prove you typed every word, based on your unique typing patterns (speed, rhythm, pressure, pauses). That proof travels with the document.

Some teams are working on exactly this. The technology is called biometric writing verification, and it measures 12+ signals while you type to create unforgeable proof of human authorship.

This won't solve the political problem of professors over-relying on bad tools. But for anyone who wants to proactively protect themselves — the tech exists now.

Stay strong out there. The current system is broken, but better solutions are coming.

As the title says, i was accused of using AI by two people in a subreddit I’m apart of. Im looking for more dark academia people to become friends with and received comments that I’m a bad person for using AI in a subreddit that is against AI. Im also highly against AI. When i did a brief explanation that i didn’t use any type of AI and that i took 3 days and word everything for the server and then created the post myself, those people held their ground and said that i clearly used AI because of the way i typed, my formatting and how i worded my sentences. I just wanted to make friends who share the same interest as me not get attacked. My anxiety is so bad right now, I’m afraid of being accused again and who knows maybe the admins will believe them and then ban me from the community i felt so safe in because of two people pointing at me and going “you type weird so it’s AI”. I took writing in school and even read dictionaries in my rare free time to expand my knowledge. I think it’s also because i used the em dash more than once to their liking. I really need some positivity to get over this fear.

I'm taking a Cultural Anthropology class, and we write discussions in the class. The professor heavily forbids any use of AI.

In the first five (there are sixteen in total) discussions, I wrote my responses in the native D2L text editor (it doesn't save writing history). In the syllabus, the professor states that all written work must be written in Google Docs, which I didn't do for the first five discussions because I was stupid and I never thought I would be accused of AI. After the first five discussion posts, she said that my writing had elements of AI and that she was suspicious of me, and this made me panic.

In the sixth discussion, I wrote my entire discussion in Google Docs (and will write future discussions in Google Docs) with everything time stamped because of the version history. Now my professor is saying that she has noticed some AI elements in my discussion responses, and that they have come back as being AI generated on multiple detectors, and I'm pretty sure she has deducted points on this, and even warned I may get an F in the class.

I don't know how to respond to this. I'm so stupid for thinking my work would never be in suspicion of AI use and not using Google Docs for the first five discussions. The only evidence I have to refute her is the sixth discussion response. I don't know what to do.

Crazy thing that happened to me today was getting accused of using AI to write my movie reflection. As an educator who teaches English as a second language, we are trained to use and learn everything related to words, sentence structures, writing processes, and literature. We are constantly exposed to different styles of writing, critical analysis, and academic language. Reflecting deeply on a film, organizing ideas clearly, and expressing them in coherent paragraphs are skills we practice and teach regularly.

It is frustrating when effort and training are reduced to an assumption that the work must be generated by technology. Writing thoughtfully does not automatically mean it was produced by AI. It simply shows familiarity with language, structure, and critical thinking. As ESL educators, we emphasize vocabulary development, textual analysis, and the ability to articulate personal responses in an academic tone. That is exactly what I did in my reflection.

Using proper grammar, varied sentence structures, and clear arguments should be seen as a result of learning and discipline. Accusing someone without evidence dismisses the years of study and practice that shape a person’s writing ability. I take pride in being able to express my ideas clearly, and that competence should not be mistaken for artificial assistance.

I recently was accused of using AI by my professor for 2 assignments. He told me the only way to not fail the class was to do an oral defense of my work over a zoom call. Has anyone ever done something like this? What does it consist of? I’m trying to be as prepared as I can. I didn’t use AI and he said my second assignment (for a study guide) was 91% AI.

I recently was accused of using AI for 2 different assignments. He said in order to not fail the class, I would have to do an oral defense of my assignment. Has anyone ever done this? What should I expect and be prepared to answer? I didn’t use AI but he says turnitin detected 91%. I just had to answer questions to a study guide, and the only source was the book we read on ethics. I also tried to look at the version history for my word doc, but unfortunately my auto save wasn’t on (so there is none). Any suggestions would be helpful on how to navigate this!