Colleges and universities nationwide and in all programs are greeting the tsunami of student AI use with their own wave of disciplinary charges alleging AI misuse. Yet school disciplinary charges alleging AI misuse are often mistaken and unwarranted. Students are getting caught up in a web created by widespread institutional use of AI detection tools, which are themselves prone to false flagging, bias, and other errors, adding to the bias and errors of school disciplinary officials.
You can, however, take certain steps to reduce your chances of facing false accusations of AI misuse. Read below our insightful recommendations on the steps to take. And don't let false accusations of AI misuse ruin your substantial investment in your higher education and spoil your educational and career goals. Retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team for skilled and experienced defense of your AI misuse disciplinary charges. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to get our highly qualified representation. Your education, reputation, investment, and career are worth it.
AI Use Among Higher Education Students
As a college or university student, you are probably well aware of the burgeoning use of AI tools among students. Higher education is watching the trend closely, too. One chronicle reports that as many as 90% of college students use AI tools. Another report pegs that more than half of students use AI tools every week and that a quarter use AI tools every day. Students use AI not just for information searches and spell checking but also for note taking, discussion, paper summarizing, document paraphrasing, text generation and improvement, image and video generation, paper topics and drafts, citation form, and problem solving.
Popular AI apps on campus include Gemini, Canva Magic Write, ChatGPT, Essaybot, Jasper, Grammarly, Hemingway Editor, Chegg, CourseHero, Edgenuity, Brainly AI, Socratic, Animoto, CiteThisForMe, Consensus AI, and QuillBot. Students also use dozens of other AI apps on campus and online. Our attorneys understand campus AI tools, uses, and temptations. Don't hesitate to get our help with your AI misuse allegations or issues, whether before or during a disciplinary investigation, or as soon as you face AI misuse disciplinary charges.
Institutional Use of AI Detection Software Tools
Students aren't the only ones using AI on campus. Colleges and universities, and their personnel and programs, make liberal use of AI software and systems, too, including to catch student AI misuse cheaters. Institutions across the country use AI monitoring, proctoring, plagiarism, and other detection software to monitor student AI use on exams, papers, and other assignments, problem sets, video and presentation projects, research, and other academic activities. Institutions also use AI detection software to monitor student AI misuse in classrooms, discussion groups, online forums, exams, and other contexts.
Common institutional AI detection apps include Gaggle, GoGuardian, ClassDojo AI, Presence AI, GPT Zero, Copyleaks AI Detector, Proctorio, ProctorU AI, Examity AI, Honorlock, ExamSoft ExamMonitor, Securly AI, Originality.ai, SafeAssign AI, and Sapling AI Detector, among dozens of other apps. If your college or university has already alerted you that its AI detection software and systems have flagged you for investigation of AI misuse in an exam, assignment, or other academic activity, promptly retain us to assist you. We may be able to ward off formal disciplinary charges with a prompt and thorough response to the investigation, showing the AI detection error and your innocence under the circumstances. We can also defend your formal disciplinary charges if they have already been issued.
How to Minimize AI Misuse Risks
Despite the widespread student AI use and the equally widespread institutional use of AI detection software to catch student AI misuse cheaters, you can take steps to minimize your risk of false AI misuse charges. Consider any of the following strategies to avoid AI misuse suspicion, disciplinary investigation, charges, and sanctions.
Minimize Electronic Technology Use
First, minimize your use of computers, tablets, cell phones, and other electronic technologies, even if not involving AI software. You substantially reduce your risk of AI misuse and AI misuse charges if you don't use electronic technology at all or you keep your computer use to a reasonable minimum. Instead, use traditional study practices, tools, and activities. Those traditional tools have worked for generations. Your professors, deans, and program directors may have designed your academic program initially and primarily for students to use paper, print, pad, notebook, pen, and pencil technologies. Doing so may seem to you like going back to the Dark Ages. But at the same time, appreciate the value of tactile activities, like opening physical books and making marks and writing with physical utensils, to promote attention, concentration, and learning.
Minimize AI Use
Second, minimize or even eliminate your AI use. You substantially reduce your risk of AI misuse if you don't use AI at all. You may need or want to use desktop and laptop computers, tablets, cell phones, and other electronic devices to aid your studies. Your school may even require at least some, and perhaps a lot, of online research, study, coursework, problem solving, course management, and keyboard entry. But you may be readily able to avoid adding AI tools to your personal technology devices. Keep AI software off your platforms, and you won't face the AI temptation. You also may not trigger AI detection software flagging, and you won't leave an electronic trail suggesting AI use or misuse. AI saturates online systems. But you don't have to open or use AI tools whenever offered or available. Do your own work as much as possible. It may be both good for you and risk reducing.
Record Technology Use
Third, when you must use electronic technologies or prefer to do so, try to use apps and software that track your use. You may later need to use that tracking feature to convince professors or school disciplinary investigators that you did not use AI tools, even though they were available. Google Docs, for example, along with other word processing software, can record your writing process, including saving earlier versions for easy later reproduction and inspection. Your professor may, for instance, question whether you used AI to write or improve a submitted essay. In response, you could readily pull up earlier Google Docs versions, showing how you developed the paper through successive drafts of your own.
Save Developmental Work
Next, save your academic work as you develop it. Don't delete earlier versions of your electronic notes, outlines, essay drafts, or problem-solving attempts, even if inept and experimental. Don't dispose of paper notes, sketches, outlines, and drafts, even if they are no longer useful for your academic work. Instead, save earlier versions so that you can show them to your professor or investigators, proving your own work rather than your alleged misuse of AI tools.
Consult Your Professor
Next, and perhaps foremost, discuss your AI plans with your professor before you execute them, and then follow your professor's instructions. If you are unsure of your professor's instruction, memory, or intentions, then ask your professor for an AI instruction or policy in writing, even if nothing more than a response to your email inquiry. Don't get caught relying on an offhand oral statement encouraging or permitting you to use AI, that your professor later forgets and denies. If your professor is not available or does not respond, consult an assigned teaching assistant, department chair, or academic advisor, once again documenting and following their advice or instruction.
Record Your Research
Next, make and retain a record of your research reviews and results. If you take multiple books off the library shelves for review, keep a formal or informal bibliography of the books that you actually reviewed. If you call up and review multiple online articles, add those articles to your formal or informal bibliography. Note what you drew from each research source, and even note why you rejected other research sources. Create a record of your research that shows your professor and disciplinary investigators the mental and physical labor in which you engaged to develop your topic or thesis.
Avoid Copy and Paste
Next, avoid electronic copy and paste or similar electronic functions that move electronic text or other data from the source into the original work that you plan to submit for academic credit. Copy and paste can leave suggestive, suspicious, and misleading electronic trails that your school's AI detection software may mistakenly flag as AI generated. Copy and paste can also lead you to mistakes, oversights, or laziness in clearly indicating with italics or quotation marks and clearly citing the source of quoted materials. Instead, keep a separate electronic copy of the quoted or cited material, and type in the small portions you intend to quote, clearly marking them as such. Create your own paraphrase rather than making minor modifications to copied and pasted text, and again clearly mark it as such.
Get Plagiarism Training
Academic norms and customs change and tighten as academic programs progress in level. What your high school accepted in the way of reference, paraphrase, quotation, and citation, your college program may not. And what your college program accepted, your graduate or professional program may not. When you enter your new academic program, make a deliberate effort to learn the program's norms, customs, and expectations for use and citation of sources, for original research, and for other technical academic work. Take your program's plagiarism training, if it offers such training. Request training if your program does not offer it, and you are at all unsure of the appropriate academic practices. Find a reliable staff or student mentor who knows those practices. Otherwise, your school's AI detection software may flag your work as involving misuse of AI, for your violation of various academic customs and norms.
How to Avoid AI Misuse Disciplinary Investigation
You may be able to avoid a disciplinary investigation, even after groundless suspicions arise that you may have misused AI in the course of your academic work. If a fellow student, teaching assistant, advisor, or other member of the school community alerts you that they have observed your allegedly suspicious conduct, treat their alert respectfully, and with appropriate concern. Do not dismiss the notice offhand. Ask them what they observed and why they thought it was suspicious. If that information enables you to respond with an accurate and clear explanation, then do so. Reassure the individual that you have not misused AI. But resist making rushed, emotional, or careless disclosures that might be inaccurate and might fuel further suspicions. Do the same if your professor calls you in to share AI misuse concerns.
How to Respond When Accused of AI Misuse
You may also have the opportunity to avoid formal AI misuse disciplinary charges, even if your professor or another complainant has referred you for disciplinary investigation or your school's AI detection software has flagged your academic work as potentially involving misuse of AI. Contact and consult our attorneys the moment you learn of a school investigation into your suspected misuse of AI. Our attorneys may be able to reach, communicate, advocate, and negotiate with the investigator and other disciplinary officials to head off formal disciplinary charges. We can help you identify, gather, and present your exonerating and mitigating evidence, while assisting you through a fair interview. Do not relinquish or destroy original materials, or share or delete related electronic files, without consulting us for our advice. Document and file retention is critical to pursuing your defense while avoiding spoliation and disciplinary charges for obstruction.
Premier Defense Against False AI Accusations
If your college or university has falsely accused you of misusing AI tools in your exams, assignments, or studies, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to retain our highly qualified attorneys. We have helped hundreds of students nationwide defend and defeat false accusations of the misuse of AI tools and other disciplinary charges. Get the skilled and experienced representation you need for your best disciplinary outcome.
