The advent and ready availability of artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education programs is revolutionizing how college and university students study. That revolution is nowhere more evident than in college and university foreign language courses and programs. However, professors, programs, and schools are still adjusting to the AI revolution, with many not yet ready to embrace AI or even allow students to do so. More students are now facing serious school disciplinary charges for academic misconduct related to their use and alleged misuse of AI. If you face AI disciplinary charges for unauthorized AI use in foreign language studies, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now for our skilled and experienced defense representation. Preserve and protect your valuable higher education.
AI Foreign Language Assistance Opportunities
AI foreign language assistance is a huge deal, not just in multilingual travel, family, commercial, and business settings, but also in higher education. As AI foreign language assistance programs multiply and grow more common, accessible, and powerful, the opportunities for college and university students to seize upon the programs to improve, enhance, and complete their studies also multiply. But beware of seeking and deploying AI foreign language assistance in your courses for academic credit. You are entering a potential minefield for disciplinary charges when you do so, as explained further below.
Popular AI Foreign Language Assistance Programs
Google Translate may currently dominate the popular market for AI foreign language assistance programs. However, Google Translate only represents the tip of the proverbial iceberg, with dozens of other programs also in widespread use and dozens more programs doubtless on the way toward their introduction and common use. Google Translate is so popular largely because it sits on the widely used Google platform and is available across multiple devices using common operating systems, but also because it is free and readily translates words, phrases, and pages of text between English and over 100 other languages.
However, other popular AI translators find other markets and users. Microsoft Translator, for instance, has a full suite of translation tools, including real-time conversation translation on mobile devices. Papago is a popular option for Asian languages, while many users prefer DeepL Translate for European languages. Wordly AI gains popularity for meeting and event translation, Reverso for dictionaries, conjugation, and pronunciation, and Crowdin for translating widely differing forms of content. Pick your tool. The AI foreign translation programs are out there. But when you start to deploy your favorite AI translator in your college or university foreign language courses, beware of potential disciplinary charges.
AI Translator Impacts on Higher Education
Foreign language departments and professors are naturally wary of AI translators impact on their student enrollment and their higher education employment. Your foreign language professors may soon be losing their jobs over AI translators, although they also recognize the value of AI translator tools. They just don't believe that those AI translators do the full job of enculturation and immersion into foreign language use that human interaction accomplishes. That's in part why they may insist that you not use AI in their foreign language course. They want to keep their job and teach you better than they believe AI can teach you. However, they may also be unskilled and uncomfortable using AI. Watch out for AI attitudes among your foreign language professors. See some of the views they express in the article linked to Inside Higher Ed.
AI Policies in Foreign Language Courses
Your college and university foreign language professors and departments may encourage you to use AI translators to expand your vocabulary, test your foreign language level and knowledge, and quickly translate challenging texts. They may discourage your use of AI translators for accuracy, contextual understanding, and language idioms. And they may well outright prohibit your use of AI translators on quizzes, tests, and examinations, as well as written papers submitted for course credit. They may also absolutely prohibit and condemn AI-generated enhancement of your video or audio recorded use of a foreign language. These uses would be deceptive.
Your foreign language professor and foreign language department have the primary responsibility for communicating clear guidelines on your use of AI translation tools related to your foreign language coursework. For instance, the AI & Academic Integrity statement was published by the professors of Cornell University's Center for Teaching Innovation. See also Harvard University's Office of Academic Integrity and Student Conduct statement on Academic Integrity and Teaching With(out) AI.
Under these guidelines, your foreign language department's policies, course syllabi, and written assignment and examination instructions should all clearly state the permissible and impermissible use of AI tools. Look to those sources for guidelines. However, you should also expect gaps, inconsistencies, and ambiguities in those directions, instructions, and guidelines. From your standpoint, your approach should be something like check twice before using AI once. Don't get caught facing school discipline over ambiguities, gaps, and contradictions in AI use and misuse policies.
Academic Misconduct Policies on AI Misuse
More likely, your alleged misuse of AI translation tools in your foreign language course or courses will arise under a general school academic misconduct policy. Your college or university will have an academic misconduct policy, either embedded in your school's other student conduct code policies or as a separate honor code or academic integrity commitment. See, for example, the University of Georgia's Academic Honesty Policy warning in the section on unauthorized assistance, “Never use Artificial Intelligence on an assignment unless it is explicitly authorized by your instructor before the assignment is turned in.” The same policy expressly prohibits “[u]sing Generative AI (GAI) tools unless explicitly allowed by your instructor.”
Any deceptive use of unauthorized AI translator assistance may result in disciplinary charges for academic misconduct against you. See, for example, Northern Michigan University's statement on Academic Dishonesty Using Generative AI, holding that one of the common forms of AI cheating involves when “[i]n language courses, students might use AI to translate texts or write essays in a foreign language, bypassing the learning process.”
Defending AI Translator Misuse Disciplinary Charges
Your college or university's academic honesty, integrity, or misconduct policy may not be as explicit as the above two examples. You may, in that sense, have been left wandering in the dark relative to your use of AI in your foreign language course. The probability of ambiguity in your school's academic misconduct policy raises one potential defense to your disciplinary charges, which is that your school, department, and professor were not clear in their expectations regarding your use of AI translator tools. Other defenses our highly skilled and experienced attorneys may raise in your defense, depending on your circumstances, include:
- the professor, student, staff member, or other individual accusing you of AI translator misuse has misidentified you as another student;
- your accuser is mistaken as to your innocent actions, misconstruing them as involving inappropriate AI translator use;
- your accuser is manipulating, falsifying, or exaggerating the accusations to cover up their own AI translator misuse;
- your accuser is retaliating against you or attempting to coerce you with false charges of AI translator misuse;
- while instructions regarding AI use were non-existent or ambiguous, a teaching assistant, advisor, or other authority recommended AI use;
- you acted within a reasonable safe harbor of established student customs and practices regarding AI use at your school;
- you notified your department, professor, or teaching assistant in advance of your intention to use an AI translator without response;
- you were reasonably unaware of an instruction prohibiting AI translator use because of your excused absence or similar cause;
- as soon as you realized that you may have contravened an AI use instruction or practice, you ceased AI use and attempted remedy;
- you have no disciplinary record, good academic discipline and standing, and an authentic commitment to conform to new standards.
Proving Defenses to AI Translator Misuse Charges
How our attorneys prove one or more of the above defenses to your alleged misuse of an AI translator, or other available defenses, can also be important to the favorable outcome of your disciplinary charges. Having a defense is one thing. Proving a defense is another thing. Some of the steps we may take to show your school's disciplinary officials that your defense is credible, either an early conciliation conference we arrange to attempt voluntary resolution of your charges, or at a later formal hearing on the charges, include:
- preparing you for your interview by the school investigator and for any hearing testimony, by ensuring that your recollection of events is true, accurate, and consistent with the documentary evidence;
- identifying, interviewing, securing the attendance of, and presenting your corroborating, exonerating, and mitigating witnesses in defense of the AI misuse charges;
- preparing and executing a thorough cross-examination of adverse and incriminating witnesses to reveal the inconsistency, bias, and conflict of interest in their accounts and testimony;
- identifying, securing, analyzing, organizing, and presenting electronically stored information (ESI) and documentary evidence relating to the disciplinary charges;
- retaining our forensic computer consultants or other AI consultants to examine your writing, exam responses, or other submitted work to opine and testify to the presence or absence of AI use;
- arranging conciliation conferences and preparing conciliation conference proposals and presentations to advocate and negotiate for early voluntary dismissal of the disciplinary charges;
- assisting you with completing alternative remedial measures like AI use training, resubmission of questioned work, and school service, to offer in support of requests for voluntary charge dismissal;
- preparing and presenting documentary evidence of any extenuating circumstance, such as illness, injury, medication reaction, or family emergency, that may have influenced your alleged AI misuse;
- preparing and presenting hearing exhibits, hearing briefs, opening statements, and closing arguments for your formal hearing on the charges.
School Procedures to Resolve AI Misuse Charges
Your college or university will maintain procedures to resolve disciplinary charges for AI translator misuse. Those procedures may appear in the student code of conduct or academic integrity policy, alongside the substantive prohibitions and other terms defining violations. Or those procedures may appear in a separate policy document your school maintains, specifically to ensure that school officials provide students with due process, protecting their rights and interests. See, for example, the University of Florida's Student Honor Code and Student Conduct Code, defining the hearing procedures for resolving disciplinary charges while also assuring students of fundamental fairness.
Our attorneys have substantial academic and administrative skills and experience to know how to strategically and effectively invoke your school's protective procedures. We can take all of the above-described measures to prove your defense. Yet it isn't a matter of banging on lecterns. The academic administrative customs and expectations differ from court procedures, where judges and jurors expect aggressive and contentious advocacy. We also have good relationships with and a reputation among school disciplinary officials, for our extensive academic knowledge, skills, and experience, and for our proactive approach to remedial resolutions.
Appeals and Alternative Special Relief
Your college or university procedures will also likely include your right to appeal an adverse hearing decision disciplining you on the AI misuse charges. See, again, the University of Florida's Student Honor Code and Student Conduct Code, providing for appeals of adverse administrative hearing decisions. Our attorneys have the substantial skills and experience necessary to prepare, perfect, and pursue an effective administrative appeal, identifying the reversible error in the initial decision. We may alternatively be able to obtain special relief through your school's general counsel's office, including program reinstatement if you have already lost your hearing and appeal.
Premier Attorney Defense for AI Misuse Charges
If you face college or university misconduct charges for improper AI language assistance in foreign language classes, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team for your best possible disciplinary defense outcome. Our attorneys have helped hundreds of students nationwide successfully defend AI misuse and other disciplinary charges. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to retain us to defend your case.
