Artificial intelligence (AI) tools have taken college and university campuses by storm. Students use AI tools for any number of permissible academic uses. However, students also frequently run afoul of program and professor prohibitions on using AI tools. And institutions use AI detection and monitoring software to catch students suspected of AI misuse and issue disciplinary charges and sanctions up to school suspension or expulsion. Accordingly, college and university students today face huge risks of crippling disciplinary sanctions over false accusations of AI misuse, even when not using AI at all or when using AI with professor permission for legitimate and beneficial uses. Consider our following answers to frequently asked questions about false accusations of AI misuse. Retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team if you have already faced AI misuse allegations, investigation, or disciplinary charges. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to retain our highly qualified attorneys for the defense of your false AI misuse accusations.
How Many College Students Use AI?
You are not alone if you are using or considering using AI tools in your college or university studies. Vast numbers of college and university students use AI for academic work. As many as 90% of college students use AI tools at some point during their college or university term, while more than half use AI tools every week, and a quarter use AI tools daily. You've probably noticed students using AI tools. If you haven't, then look more closely. For better or worse, it's happening everywhere, and institutions of higher education know it. Our attorneys also know the ins and outs of student AI use and how to defend false accusations of AI misuse. Trust us for your defense.
How Do College Students Use AI?
With or without permission, college and university students use AI tools for nearly every imaginable academic function and purpose. Of course, students use AI for information searches, just like everyone else does. However, students also use AI search engines to replace or augment deep academic research, not just handy web information. Students also use AI word processing tools for spell checking, again like everyone else does. However, students also use AI word processing tools for grammar checks, style improvement, quotation paraphrasing, source citations, and outright content generation. Students also use AI tools to substitute for their own note taking and summarizing of classroom or online discussion. Students also use AI tools to summarize research papers or articles, draw research conclusions, solve assigned math problems, represent step-by-step solutions, and complete multiple-choice assessments. Students also use AI tools to generate and improve design images, slide presentations, and video presentations, as well as to initiate, complete, and improve coding and other technical or scientific work. The better question may be where students don't use AI tools. AI tools are ubiquitous on college and university campuses.
What AI Tools Do College Students Use?
Software vendors and AI initiatives offer college and university students dozens, if not hundreds, of AI apps. Popular AI apps on campus begin with ChatGPT, Grammarly, Consensus AI, Canva, and Gemini (Bard), which are also used by professionals and other individuals outside of academia. But students also popularize apps more specifically geared to student markets, like Essaybot, Jasper, Hemingway Editor, Chegg, CourseHero, Edgenuity, Socratic, Animoto, CiteThisForMe, and QuillBot. Again, our attorneys and the forensic computer consultants whom we retain for student defense cases also know AI apps. We can present technical analyses of your academic work and electronic devices and files to establish or augment your defense of false AI misuse disciplinary charges.
Do Professors and Programs Prohibit AI Use?
Yes, many professors and programs sharply limit or outright prohibit AI use. As prevalent as AI is, and as helpful as AI can be for student studies, many professors and program directors retain deep concerns over student AI use. Those school officials may have little time, few resources, and even less of an inclination to learn how to incorporate student AI use into instructional programs. School officials may feel perfectly satisfied with things as they are, without having to deal with confusing and frightening new AI technologies that threaten to disrupt and even replace their own work.
In that context, the simpler approach for professors and program directors can be to ban student AI use altogether. And student AI bans remain a common solution to challenges that AI tools present to academic officials. According to one academic chronicle's survey, well over one-third of college professors do not use AI and have no plans to do so. Two-thirds of college professors haven't used AI in the classroom. The reasons that they give begin with having higher priorities, lacking technology interest and skill, and having little or no institutional support. We understand why professors and programs resist student AI use. We also know how to give proper context to student AI use, in defense of false disciplinary accusations.
Do Colleges Use AI Software Detection?
Yes. Colleges and universities deploy AI detection and monitoring software and systems across a wide range of student academic activities. You might as well assume that your college or university is using AI to analyze your own exams and other academic work, as well as to monitor your own academic studies and other activities. To identify suspected AI cheaters, institutions of higher education use AI detection tools to proctor on-site exams, monitor off-campus online exams, analyze exam response patterns, analyze submitted essays and other academic work, analyze problem and project solutions, monitor classrooms and other student discussion forums, and monitor online communications using school devices, networks, and accounts. College and university exam software, learning management systems, admissions and enrollment systems, advising systems, and business operations systems can also include AI tools to detect suspected student AI misuse. Again, the better question may be where schools don't use AI detection tools. Our attorneys can help you defend disciplinary charges falsely alleging your AI misuse, flagged by your school's AI detection software.
What AI Software Detection Apps Do Colleges Use?
Just as is true for students, AI software vendors and AI initiatives offer colleges and universities dozens, if not hundreds, of AI detection software products and systems. Common institutional AI detection apps include GPT Zero, Turnitin, Copyleaks AI Detector, Gaggle, GoGuardian, ClassDojo AI, and Presence AI. Common institutional AI detection apps geared specifically to exam monitoring include ExamSoft ExamMonitor, Proctorio, ProctorU AI, Examity AI, and Honorlock. Other common institutional AI detection apps include Securly AI, Originality.ai, SafeAssign AI, and Sapling AI Detector. Our attorneys and the forensic computer consultants whom our attorneys retain for individual student defense cases know these and other institutional AI detection apps. Our attorneys can often present convincing technical analyses of these systems and their reports to effectively defend students against false AI detection charges.
Is AI Detection Software Reliable?
No, at least not nearly to the extent that college and university disciplinary officials may prefer or attempt to rely on it. AI detection software is well known for the many false flags it can raise and false accusations it can trigger. A first problem with AI detection software is that humans design it, meaning that it will reflect the same flaws as its human designers. AI software only has the illusion of objectivity and certainty, when AI systems are no more objective and certain, and may be substantially less objective and certain than their human designers, users, and counterparts.
AI systems also produce false flag errors because they examine limited information without full context. Whatever the AI system observes and analyzes, such as a student's paper, student's exam responses, student's keyboard activity during an exam or exercise, or student's demeanor and behavior in a classroom or when surveilled for an online exam, the AI system generally has no other relevant context. Thus, what looks to the AI system like suspicious behavior may have appeared entirely innocent to a human observer who knew the full context, such as the particular student's style, character, disabilities, culture, experience, or other explanatory conditions.
AI systems also encourage false accusations of AI misuse because they disarm and disable professors, deans, program directors, and other disciplinary officials from making a complete investigation into the full context. College and university professors and administrators generally have multiple pressing and higher-priority obligations, beyond observing, investigating, and pursuing disciplinary charges over student academic misconduct. Academic misconduct should be and generally is the exception, not the rule. School officials thus leave detection, charging, and proof of charges to these purportedly amazing and unimpeachable new AI detection systems. AI detection tools make disciplinary proceedings more common and less reliable. They can be faulty and frequently misused technologies. And our attorneys know their faults and how to use those faults to prove your innocence to their false AI misuse disciplinary charges.
What If Turnitin's AI Detector Says I Cheated?
As just discussed, AI detection software like the popular Turnitin commonly issue false flags incorrectly identifying student academic work as having used AI tools. Even Turnitin itself recognizes that its AI detection tool produces false positives. Turnitin's response to the huge false positives problem that its AI detection tool creates for countless students is to assert that false positives involve “a less than 1%” rate. Well, fine, but 1% of what? If it's 1% of everything the tool reviews, then it spits out false positives at an incredibly alarming rate, given the huge number of academic submissions professors collectively review in courses and at institutions every term. If, instead, it is 1% of flagged student work, then it still flags an awfully high number of innocent students for false AI misuse charges. So, don't believe the AI tool's false positive report.
Instead, trust our attorneys to construe Turnitin's own admission and the admissions of other AI detection software creators and vendors for your appropriate defense to false AI misuse disciplinary charges. Turnitin's own statements assert, “We'd like to emphasize that Turnitin does not make a determination of misconduct even in the space of text similarity....” Turnitin instead says that its flagging is just a data point. Well, that's not the way schools are using AI detection tools, as mere data points. So again, let us show your school just how unreliable its AI detection software is. We have the knowledge, skill, and experience to do so.
Do Schools Require Professors to Turn Students In?
Yes. Colleges and universities, as well as their programs and departments, adopt varying policies on how to use AI detection software in disciplinary investigations and charges. Some schools leave it to the individual professor to decide what to do when an AI detection tool flags a student's submitted work. Professors may know or trust that the student did not use AI because the professor knows the student's research and composition skills and good character, and may even have observed progressive drafts or other developmental work. Yet many schools are offering guidelines or imposing procedures requiring professors to turn in for disciplinary investigation work flagged to involve 50%, 60%, 75%, or other AI use results.
Your professor, in other words, may have had to turn you in. Yet that does not entirely absolve your professor or your school of responsibility for your false AI misuse disciplinary charges. Your professor could have sent along a note regarding your sure or probable innocence when turning you in. And your school could have performed a thorough investigation before issuing false charges. Let us help you address your false charges, no matter what your school's AI detection tool misreported about your original and innocent work.
Why Do Schools Use AI Detection Software?
That's a good question, given the AI detection software's many problems. The answer often has a lot to do with the convenience of AI detection software and systems. Their main point is to relieve professors, program directors, academic and student deans, and other school personnel with disciplinary responsibilities of the burden of monitoring and investigation. For labor cost savings alone, institutions of higher education would love to replace staff or part-time proctors, security teams, disciplinary investigators, disciplinary committees, hearing officers, stenographers, counselors, and other personnel involved in traditional disciplinary proceedings. If AI detection software can streamline and even short-circuit a full disciplinary proceeding, then in the school's view, all the better. But as you've seen just above, short-circuiting a disciplinary process can expose students to false AI misuse accusations. Our attorneys know how to turn this bad situation in your favor, in defense of your false AI misuse disciplinary charges.
How Can Schools Reduce False AI Misuse Charges?
You are right to believe that the problem of false AI misuse charges, due to unreliable AI detection software, should be on your school officials, not on you. You've seen just above that even the AI software vendors tell school officials to use AI detection flagging as just one data point, and a relatively unreliable data point at that. Schools have clear ways to reduce false AI misuse charges. Unfortunately, those ways mostly involve greater time, care, and effort, which is unlikely to happen at most schools. Schools can, for instance, use more than one AI detection tool to review flagged work. One AI tool may indicate a 100% AI match score, while another AI tool represents no match or only a 5% or 10% match.
Human judgment, especially skilled professor judgment, can also play a corrective role. Professors tend to develop substantial skill and experience identifying the various forms and levels of student work, including anomalous work produced by academically under-prepared students, ESL students, adult or senior students, and other students with differing experiences and profiles. AI detection tools tend to consider the whole pool in the aggregate, while human reviewers, especially those who know the involved student, can adjust for particulars.
Schools can also conduct fair and comprehensive investigations before issuing formal AI misuse disciplinary charges based on an AI detection tool flagging alone. The reasonable investigation would usually involve asking the accused student what happened and closely examining the student's documentation and response. Our attorneys can help you with that response when you retain us as soon as learning of an AI misuse investigation. Don't wait for the false charges. Get our help to responsibly and efficiently head them off. You'll save a ton of time, trouble, risk, and embarrassment.
Can Bias Play a Role in False AI Misuse Accusations?
Yes. The AI detection systems themselves can inject biases of all kinds into a disciplinary process involving a false AI misuse accusation. AI detection systems have the goal and design of alerting disciplinary officials to anomalous student work, communication, dress, demeanor, and behavior. AI detection systems look for the out-of-the-ordinary. And what, after all, defines a minority student or group, and defines bias or prejudice against minority individuals or groups, other than disparate treatment over differences? AI monitoring and detection software can inject bias against students and student groups based on disability, sex, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, military status, veteran status, family status, and other characteristics that anti-discrimination laws protect. AI monitoring systems inject biases against these students and groups in the following ways, among other ways:
- flagging anomalous student physical appearance, such as height, weight, or hairstyles;
- flagging anomalous student physical conditions such as artificial limbs;
- flagging student physical disabilities such as limps or hunches;
- flagging student mental disabilities, such as inattention or spasmodic concentration;
- flagging student emotional disabilities such as outbursts, anxiety, or nervous speech patterns;
- flagging student disability equipment like canes, breathing apparatus, and walkers, and supports like service animals;
- flagging anomalous student demeanor, such as eye contact avoidance related to autism or profane speech related to tourette's syndrome;
- flagging anomalous student behavior such as repetitive motion related to autism;
- flagging anomalous student dress such as head and face coverings, robes, or turbans;
- flagging anomalous student items such as religious icons, knives, flasks, and swords;
- flagging anomalous student communication such as Ebonics, vernacular, profanity, informal address, and colloquialisms;
- flagging anomalous student attendance and schedules related to medical care, family, work, or military duties.
Can AI Accusations Involve Unauthorized Assistance?
Yes, college and university disciplinary officials can turn AI use, permissible or not, into false accusations of unauthorized assistance. Colleges and universities commonly prohibit unauthorized assistance in their academic integrity policies and honor codes. See, for example, the University of North Carolina Honor Committee Constitution, which expressly defines academic dishonesty and cheating to include unauthorized assistance. Institutions of higher education are now also frequently including student unauthorized use AI as a form of prohibited unauthorized assistance. See, for example, the University of Notre Dame's Undergraduate Academic Code of Honor, stating explicitly that “unauthorized use of generative AI will be considered a violation of the Honor Code.” See also the University of Missouri Office of Academic Integrity statement that students “who use ChatGPT and similar tools on assignments without permission, or who use them in improper ways, are violating the academic integrity rules of the University.”
Our attorneys can determine whether your school defines unauthorized assistance as including the unauthorized use of AI tools. We can then help you deploy a proper interpretation of your school's academic integrity policy or honor code, in defense of your false AI misuse disciplinary charges. The content of your school's academic integrity policy or honor code can influence your disciplinary outcome. Let us help you advocate appropriately.
Can I Minimize the Risk of False AI Use Accusations?
Yes. Consider taking these steps to minimize your risk of false AI misuse disciplinary charges. First, reduce your use of electronic technologies. Learning the old-fashioned way, with print rather than electronic materials and tools, has its benefits. Stay offline as much as reasonably possible, and you'll stand a much greater chance of avoiding the snare of your school's AI detection systems and software. Next, avoid and eliminate AI tool use. If you must use computers, don't upload, open, or deploy AI tools. Next, prefer software like Google Docs that allow you to track, save, reproduce, and display your earlier files, drafts, and versions. That way, you can show your own development of your original work, when you face AI misuse suspicions, heading off false disciplinary charges. Save all developmental work. Don't discard drafts or delete earlier electronic file versions.
Other measures to minimize your risk of false AI misuse accusations include consulting your professor before any AI use. Confirm your professor's oral permission to use AI in a contemporaneous email or other writing. If your professor won't respond to your AI inquiry, get guidance from your department chair, program director, or academic advisor, and once again document in writing their advice. Also, record the progress of your project or research. Notebooks, articles, or other materials you consulted, whether you used them or not. Avoid electronic copying and pasting of research materials or data. Your school's AI detection software may misidentify copy and paste as your misuse of AI tools, or you may neglect to mark the paste as a quotation with appropriate citation. Finally, get training in plagiarism, unauthorized assistance, research fraud, or any other form of misconduct common to your academic program. These steps should help you avoid false accusations of AI misuse.
Who Turns Students in for Suspected AI Misuse?
The outcome of your false AI misuse disciplinary matter may indeed depend in part on who reported your suspected misconduct and the basis, motive, or obligation they had to do so. Professors, of course, are frequently the members of the school community most likely to detect suspected AI misuse and to accordingly turn the student suspect in for disciplinary investigation. Professors generally handle the evaluation and grading of academic work, putting them in the position of reviewing AI detection software reports and false flagging. Your school may give greater credence to a professor's false accusation or report that you misused AI than to reports by others. However, our attorneys still have the knowledge, skill, and experience to make a strong defense against false professor charges.
Professors, though, aren't the only members of the school community who may make or trigger false accusations of AI misuse. Your fellow students may instead be the complainants. On one hand, disciplinary officials may minimize the credibility of student complaints because students lack a professor's expertise and standing, and because students may not have direct observations and evaluation of the allegedly AI-generated or modified work. But conversely, disciplinary officials may also credit student complaints based on direct student observations of suspected AI misuse. Students sometimes observe private, outside-of-class matters that professors have no opportunity to observe. Students also talk to one another about their AI use and misuse. Our attorneys know how to counter and contest false student complaints of your AI misuse.
Other members of the school community may also initiate false AI misuse disciplinary charges. Schools sometimes give proctors, department chairs, program deans and directors, academic advisors, and similar academic officials authority or responsibility to monitor for and report AI misuse, including through the use of AI detection and monitoring software. Those officials may have more or less credibility than a complaining professor or student, depending on their role, observations, experience, and skills. And ultimately, anyone may complain to school officials about student misconduct. Trust us to know how to evaluate a complainant's credibility and their false complaints, and defend accordingly.
How Do I Respond to AI Misuse Suspicions?
You might be able to avoid a formal disciplinary investigation leading to a formal disciplinary charge falsely alleging your AI misuse, if you respond appropriately to the first suspicions. Professors, teaching assistants, and classmates are often the first to raise concerns and suspicions over a student's potential AI misuse. If a member of the school community alerts you that they believe they observed your misuse of AI, treat their concern seriously and respectfully. Avoid anger, offense, and offhand or dismissive responses that may elevate the suspicions. Instead, the concerned individual should be asked exactly what they observed that they thought was suspicious. Their response may enable you to calmly and accurately explain the true and innocent circumstances. If, instead, you remain uncertain about the nature of or basis for their concern, promptly contact us for guidance, advice, and representation. We may be able to help you responsibly head off a formal complaint and investigation.
How Do I Respond to an AI Misuse Investigation?
If you have already learned that your school has begun a formal investigation based on a false accusation that you misused AI, your best step is to promptly retain us to assist you through the investigation. We can often help our student client show the disciplinary investigator the exonerating evidence or mitigating explanation for the allegation. Our appearance on your behalf alerts school officials that you are taking their concerns seriously and will have our advice, advocacy, and assistance in responding to and defending any potential charges. We are often able to arrange an early conciliation conference at which to convince disciplinary officials that the investigation, no matter its course and conclusions, should not lead to formal charges. We may even be able to help you complete remedial and restorative measures to aid in our negotiation with school officials for early voluntary dismissal.
How Do Schools Pursue False AI Misuse Charges?
Colleges and universities maintain disciplinary procedures, accompanying their academic integrity policies and honor codes. Those procedures can differ from school to school but generally have common features. Schools usually have a formal complaint process for individuals observing suspected AI misuse to invoke. That process may invite an oral complaint or require a written complaint. School disciplinary officials review complaints, assigning an investigator only to complaints of potential merit. The investigator should collect documents, secure electronic evidence, and interview witnesses, including the accused student, to prepare an investigation report. School officials may use the report to attempt a voluntary mediated resolution before issuing formal disciplinary charges.
If your matter proceeds to formal charges, you should receive notice of the charges and your right to invoke a formal hearing. At the hearing, you should have the opportunity to give your own testimony and to call other witnesses and offer defense exhibits. You may have some opportunity to challenge adverse evidence including cross-examining adverse witnesses. Your school's procedures should permit you to retain us to aid you at the formal hearing. If you lose the hearing and suffer discipline, you should have a right to appeal to a higher official or panel. While your school will likely indicate that appeal decisions are final, you may have a right under your state's administrative procedure act or other law for civil court review and relief.
What Discipline May My School Impose for AI Misuse?
Keep in mind when evaluating and responding to your false AI misuse disciplinary charges that your school likely retains the authority under its academic integrity policy to suspend or dismiss you if it finds that you committed the alleged offense. School conduct codes and procedures routinely grant school disciplinary officials the broadest discretion to impose sanctions all the way from caution, warning, reprimand, and probation, up to loss of credit, loss of privileges, loss of honors and scholarships, and school suspension or expulsion.
While the school's discretion to impose a range of progressive discipline may appear to you to be highly concerning, our attorneys know how to turn that discretion to your advantage. We are often able to work in advance with a student client to complete remedial education, training, and counseling, or to take similar steps to show disciplinary officials that they should exercise their discretion to forgo punitive sanctions or limit sanctions to measures that do not interfere with your education or leave a permanent record of discipline. We can, of course, seek to defeat your false AI misuse charges entirely. But if the school credibly proves that you engaged in some degree and form of misconduct, we may nonetheless be able to help you avoid any punitive sanctions and permanent disciplinary record.
How Can I Prove I Didn't Use AI?
Our strong recommendation is that you not attempt to do so on your own, without our skilled and experienced help. You likely have invested too much in your education and too much in riding on the disciplinary outcome. That said, here are some basic steps you should expect to take, of course, with our highly qualified help:
- first, identify, gather, preserve in original form, and organize for clear presentation every document, file, image, or other evidence of your academic work;
- second, confirm your own clear understanding of the resources you consulted, the process you followed, and the steps you took to develop, complete, and submit your original and innocent work;
- third, identify the professor, department chair, program director, or other school official who holds the authority to dismiss, advance, or decide your pending false accusation;
- fourth, arrange a time to meet with that school official, when both you and the official have the time, attention, and poise to address and evaluate the false charges;
- then, present your complete, truthful, and accurate explanation of your innocence, original work, and, if you know it, the reason for the false positive;
- next, get the official to document the decision, positive or negative, in writing, so that you can review your next steps to appeal an adverse decision or to carry out and enforce a positive decision dismissing the charges;
- finally, ensure that the school has fully executed the favorable resolution of your false AI misuse charges, so that your academic record is once again clean and clear of any discipline or unresolved charges.
How Can an Attorney Prove My Innocence?
You are right to consider the critical role of an attorney for the defense of your false AI misuse disciplinary charges. Yet let's begin by ensuring that you understand that you don't need just any attorney but instead our highly qualified academic administrative defense attorneys. Local criminal defense lawyers, personal injury attorneys, and transactional attorneys generally lack academic administrative knowledge, skills, and experience. They'll know criminal and civil court rules, and transactional law, but not the peculiar education laws, rules, procedures, customs, and practices that determine the outcome of false AI misuse disciplinary charges. And unqualified legal representation can, in academic matters, be worse than no representation, given the substantial discretion that academic officials have over academic matters.
That said, when you hire our highly qualified attorneys, we can notify school officials of our appearance to arrange an early conciliation conference. By the time of the conference, we will have identified, gathered, analyzed, and organized your defense evidence for presentation. We will also have retained and consulted forensic computer professionals as appropriate to prove your technical AI defense. We are often able to gain a charge dismissal at that early informal conference. Otherwise, we can invoke your school's formal hearing to present your defense evidence and cross-examine adverse witnesses. If you have already lost your hearing, we can take available appeals, and if you have lost your appeals, pursue civil court review and relief or special alternative relief from oversight officials.
What Is My Goal for False AI Misuse Charges?
Your goal when facing false AI misuse disciplinary charges should be to see the charges resolved and dismissed in your favor as promptly and efficiently as possible, with the least disruption and embarrassment. Your goal should further be to ensure that the favorable resolution of your disciplinary charges leaves no mark on your academic record. We can help you achieve your resolution goals and the best possible disciplinary outcome.
Premier Defense for False Accusations of Using AI
If you are a college or university student facing false accusations of having used AI, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team for your best disciplinary outcome. Our attorneys have helped hundreds of students in all locations and programs, and at all levels, successfully defend false accusations of using AI and other disciplinary charges. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to retain our highly qualified attorneys.
