Body
Description
This article provides instructions on how to use Turnitin AI Writing Detection in ISU Canvas at Idaho State University (ISU). Turnitin's AI writing detection capability is designed to help educators identify text that might be prepared by a generative AI tool such as large-language models, chatbots, word spinners, and bypasser tools.
Using Turnitin AI Writing Detection
Turnitin has released its AI writing detection capabilities to help educators uphold academic integrity while ensuring that students are treated fairly. An AI writing indicator has been added to the Turnitin Similarity Report. It shows an overall percentage of the document that AI writing tools or large language models may have generated. The indicator further links to a report which highlights the text segments that the model predicts were written by an AI tool. Please note, online instructors are able to see the indicator.
Tip:
While Turnitin has confidence in its model, Turnitin does not make a determination of misconduct, rather it provides data for the educator to make an informed decision based on their academic and institutional policies. The percentage on the AI writing indicator show not be used as the sole basis for action or a definitive grading measure by instructors.
Identifying how Turnitin AI Writing Detection Works
When a paper is submitted in Turnitin, the submission is first broken into segments of text that are roughly a few hundred words (about five to ten sentences). Those segments are then overlapped with each other to capture each sentence in context. The segments are run against Turnitin's AI detection model and gives each sentence a score between 0 and 1 to determine whether it is written by a human or by AI. If the model determines that a sentence was not generated by AI, it will receive a score of 0. If it determines the entirety of the sentence was generated by AI it will receive a score of 1. Using the average scores of all the segments within the document, the model then generates an overall prediction of how much text in the submission Turnitin believes has been generated by AI.
Warning: The Turnitin writing detection model may not always be accurate (it may misidentify human-written, AI-generated, and AI-paraphrased text), so it should not be used as the sole basis for adverse actions against a student. It takes further scrutiny and human judgement in conjunction with an organization's application of its specific academic policies to determine whether any academic misconduct has occurred.