Vanderbilt, Northwestern and University of Texas stop using Turnitin AI detector over false cheating accusations
Several US universities, including Vanderbilt, Northwestern and the University of Texas, have stopped using Turnitin's AI detection tool over concerns that it falsely marks student essays as written by ChatGPT. Vanderbilt estimated that the tool's 1% false-positive rate could have wrongly labelled about 750 of 75,000 papers submitted last year. A Texas professor came under fire for failing half his class after the software identified their essays as AI-generated. Turnitin said its technology is not meant to replace educators' professional discretion.
- Date it happened
- 2023-08-01
- Organisation involved
- Multiple universities (Vanderbilt University, Northwestern University, University of Texas)
- Product, system or model
- Turnitin's AI detection tool
This incident was imported from businessinsider.com. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.
This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.