‘I wrote this’: UCF student’s essay mistakenly flagged as being written by Artificial Intelligence

ORLANDO, Fla. — Universities across the country are cracking down on students who try to use Artificial Intelligence to assist with assignments.

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However, one local student was forced to jump through hoops to prove his work was actually his own after it was mistakenly flagged as being written by A.I.

While it’s being advertised as the way of the future, University of Central Florida Student Christian Bradley says the technology caused quite a headache for him.

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“I got a grade from my professor that was very low,” Bradley explained. “He left a bunch of comments, and one of the comments was that it was marked as written by A.I.”

Bradley swears that’s not what happened, but like many other universities, UCF is cracking down on any chances that students could be using AI for the wrong reasons.

While officials won’t get into the specifics of how they do it, the university released a statement saying, in part, “UCF is working closely with faculty members to help them use A.I. in a way that develops students’ critical thinking skills while also encouraging academic integrity. This includes hosting conferences and providing online resources to support faculty as they navigate the use of A.I. in their classrooms.

For those flagged, it means proving your work. Fortunately for Bradley, he had saved his progress as he worked.

“I basically just clicked on the autosaves and showed him, you know, I wrote this,” Bradley explained. “This is my progress of me writing through it, and getting it all done on my own.”

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From there, the professor in Bradley’s case reconsidered.

“I’m very thankful that my professor was very understanding of this and very helpful,” Bradley said. “But I can definitely see how it could be an issue in the future for students.”

However, that’s not always the case. Professor Aleya Bradley teaches Communication at Bethune-Cookman University. She says, just one semester into the very real artificial intelligence boom, she’s seeing it everywhere, and the software program “Turn it In” that they use isn’t always perfect.

“It’s very great for plagiarism…great for article to article, or paper to paper.” Bradley said. “But the thing with the testing A.I., it’s not 100-percent.”

Bethune-Cookman bans access to A.I.-powered writing assistants like ChatGPT and YouChat from all university servers, which means students would have to go out of their way- off campus- to be able to use them.

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However, it still happens, which is why Professor Bradley says, on long writing assignments, she’s now requiring her students to go back to using pen and paper.

“Handwritten assignments or things in class where I can actually watch them do it,” Professor Bradley explained. “If not, there’s a high chance that they might use A.I. to complete these assignments.”

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