Experimenting with powerful tools to see what technology is capable of doing can be an exciting adventure.
When new types of innovative software become available to us, it's only second nature to see how we can use it to enrich our everyday lives. In recent years, as AI models and increasingly-smart online academic tools have become more popular, many people have been able to use them to expedite tasks and reduce busywork in many fields — from research to programming and more.
Unfortunately, these tools have also led to a surge in online cheating.
ChatGPT, an AI tool designed to generate human-like responses to user prompts, has given students an easy way to generate essays and glean unauthorized homework assistance with seemingly few ways of garnering suspicion.
However, there are some ways educators can determine that a student is likely cheating via ChatGPT. And, in some cases, suspicion can be enough: If your student's teacher escalates a complaint against your child to your school's administration, your student could face suspension even if they haven't cheated at all. The Student Defense Team at the Lento Law Firm is here to help you protect your child from unfair cheating allegations and outsized consequences. Here, we'll provide all the information you need to know about cheating with ChatGPT.
What Is ChatGPT, and How Can Students Cheat With It?
ChatGPT is an AI tool trained on internet text to generate unique answers in response to user prompts. The text it generates can help people translate languages, generate relatively readable text, and complete research in a prompt manner. This can help students accelerate research supporting homework assignments. It can also answer questions for them, create outlines, help them improve the text they write, and more.
One of the most prevalent ways students can cheat with this tech is through complete essay generation. (In fact, news outlets have released think pieces wondering whether ChatGPT has killed the student essay.)
That's likely going a bit far — but it does illustrate just how pervasive some schools believe cheating with ChatGPT could be.
Crossing the Line: When Using ChatGPT is Cheating
Simply stating that all use of ChatGPT is cheating isn't very useful. As AI engines become more and more prevalent in our day-to-day life, blanket prohibitions against ChatGPT and similar tools could be as practical as prohibiting the use of internet search engines.
But where's the line?
Your school may have released updated recommendations for ChatGPT and AI engine use. It's worth checking your school's website or social media to see if this is true. If not, here are some standard thresholds for cheating when it comes to the use of online homework help and text-generation tools:
- Using online research, AI, and writing tools if your school or your instructor expressly forbids them — especially if specific tools, such as ChatGPT, are called out by name.
- Using ChatGPT to get specific answers to test or homework questions you should find, write or otherwise create yourself.
- Using ChatGPT to write entire paragraphs of text that you then copy and paste or repeat word-for-word as part of essay questions or essays.
If your school does not have a no-AI-tools-allowed policy, your teacher may not mind if you use ChatGPT for research purposes — much like you might use Google or Wikipedia as a starting point (for research only).
You might wonder, though: ChatGPT generates unique text answers, or, in other words, its responses shouldn't be plagiarized from the internet. Theoretically, it should be difficult for your school to tell if you're pawning off an entire essay to a bot to write.
In theory, this is correct. In practice, it's usually easier to tell that a student is outsourcing their writing than you might think.
How Will Your School Find Out You Used ChatGPT?
Your school may become suspicious and initiate an investigation into your actions if your teacher sees any of the following potential signs of ChatGPT-based cheating in your work:
- Suspicious similarities to other students' submissions. ChatGPT generates unique responses, but if multiple students use ChatGPT to cheat, there's a decent chance that their essays will sound eerily similar.
- Sudden leaps in language proficiency. If you start submitting work written above your grade level or a bit more skillful than your previous work, your teacher will wonder if misconduct is afoot.
- Clear plagiarism. ChatGPT and other AI text generators usually don't copy text straight from the internet, but it does happen. Or, in some cases, ChatGPT might include a famous quote as part of a response, and a student copying and pasting that response might not cite the clearly-borrowed part of the text.
Ultimately, if your teacher believes they can sanction you for cheating, they can — or, at least, they can make your life a lot more complicated than it needs to be.
What to Do if Your School Accuses You of Cheating With ChatGPT
If your school accuses your student of cheating with ChatGPT, you have three things you need to do as quickly as possible after you learn about your accusations.
- Resist the urge to explain yourself or retaliate. Even if you feel there's a relatively simple argument that could clear up your case, stay quiet! It can be easier than you think to say something that could strengthen the case against you.
- Collect as much evidence to support your statement as possible. See what your school's code of conduct says about ChatGPT and AI tool use, save all correspondence from your school about the alleged incident and keep all copies of the assignment in question.
- Retain the services of experienced student and education defense advisor Joseph D. Lento and the Education Defense Team at the Lento Law Firm.
The professionals of the Lento Law Firm Team have a rock-solid understanding of school disciplinary policies. For your best chance of experiencing a successful outcome after potentially devastating cheating allegations, you need to work with a pro. Attorney-Advisor Joseph D. Lento can help you gather evidence, interview witnesses, mount a strategic defense, and pursue practical negotiations to protect your academic future.
Contact Joseph D. Lento and the Lento Law Firm today by calling 888.535.3686.
