Earning a college degree is challenging. College also isn’t just glorified job training: being challenged is one of the key objectives when you seek out higher education. Nevertheless, degree programs and future employers’ expectations change with time, and so do the tools one uses in their education. It once was a novelty to bring a laptop to school: today, we are well past the digitization of the college experience and the first few generations of edtech. We are now in the age of AI, and it is drastically changing the college experience and school policies. The use of generative AI is now being added to academic misconduct policies and often treated with the same severity as plagiarism and cheating in several institutions.
Many students are turning to generative AI like ChatGPT and Claude to do their homework or write term papers. In turn, professors are also utilizing AI detection tools like Grammarly AI Checker, Quetext, and Turnitin to check for plagiarism and the likelihood that generative AI wrote your essay. While the purpose of these AI checkers is to ensure that no plagiarism was committed, you may be subject to academic investigation for AI usage even if you worked very hard on your assignments and provided 100% original content.
Were you accused of violating your college’s anti-AI policy, and are facing discipline as a result? The LLF National Law Firm can help. Call us at 888-535-3686 or send us a message online.
How Does Grammarly AI Checker Work?
Grammarly AI Checker has a simple user interface with a basic free version that gives you a percentage of the text that they flag as potentially AI-generated. The free versions offer a detailed report of the flagged passages and suggestions for how to change them. The paid version offers additional features that integrate with Grammarly’s primary functions, like deeper analysis and suggestions based on the tone you want to set for the piece.
Grammarly AI Checker determines whether AI was used in the passage by analyzing the structure, grammar, tone, and word choice. It searches for patterns that match large datasets of AI-generated content, and determines whether the passage you pasted matches up with those patterns.
While AI-generated output is increasing in quality over time, AI passages and essays often completely lack the nuance that can only come from your own experiences, studies, observations, and writing style that you develop over your life. Grammarly AI Checker also does vocabulary spot-checks, as AI-generated output tends to use simpler language for a wider audience, as opposed to more advanced and/or specialized vocabulary used in academia.
Is Grammarly AI Checker Accurate?
Like most AI detectors, Grammarly AI Checker is not completely fail-safe.
Grammarly even admits this on their own blog. Both the free and paid versions of their AI checker are limited based on the quality of the data that they trained on. While Grammarly AI Checker trained on tens of thousands of pieces of AI-generated content before going live, Grammarly recommends that you verify your results with multiple AI detection tools to ensure that you don’t get a false positive, where content written by a human is mistaken for AI, or a false negative, where AI-generated content gets mistaken for human-created work.
There are a couple of reasons why Grammarly AI Checker is not always accurate.
One of the main reasons is that AI output is becoming more sophisticated daily. Professional writers routinely express frustration that their original work doesn’t pass AI detectors like Grammarly AI Checker, Quetext, and similar tools because their grammar gets flagged. Professional writers use em dashes, emote in their work, and tailor the tone and voice to their audience. Their work often results in false positives, and this is a risk that students need to be mindful of as more professors and university departments widely adopt AI detection tools.
AI detectors like Grammarly AI Checker also frequently flag certain writing styles. If your first language is not English, AI detectors are more biased to flag your writing style. Since they are modeled to flag writing that seems robotic, repetitive, or generic, this can result in false positives that unfairly result in being accused of using AI in your work. It also unjustly targets students who haven’t fully formed their writing style yet, or have difficulties with writing due to stronger skill sets in math and science, or learning disabilities.
What Are the Consequences of Generative AI Use in School?
If you are accused of violating your school’s generative AI policy, it is a very serious matter that can impede your academic progress.
You may face the following consequences:
- Poor grades: Whether you are fairly graded or not, professors may give you lower marks if they suspect you are relying on AI to pass their class, even if their AI detector resulted in a false positive.
- Retaking courses: If a professor, academic advisor, or other decision-maker has reason to believe that you are using generative AI to submit your work, they may make you retake entire courses.
- Loss of trust: The academic community may lose its trust in you if you are accused of using AI to write term papers or pass exams, even if the accusation is false.
- Disciplinary action: Many universities are now adopting tougher stances against generative AI to ensure that students develop critical thinking, writing, and research skills. AI is now being included in more misconduct policies and treated similarly to plagiarism. Such an accusation may result in suspension or expulsion.
As AI continues to evolve, so will academic misconduct policies. If you are accused of using AI in an unethical way in your studies, you may need to appeal disciplinary action so you don’t risk your future. The LLF National Law Firm is ready to advocate for students nationwide. Call us at 888-535-3686 or send us a message online.