Detecting Documents Written by AI

ByRichard Byrne

A couple of weeks ago in this newsletter I told you to get to know AI before your students turn in an essay written with tools like ChatGPT, Magic Write, and Moonbeam. Many people replied to me with questions about preventing the use of those tools by students.

In response to some of those emails I said that I’m sure there are people working on developing tools to detect writing generated by AI. Sure enough, last week Quill.org and CommonLit.org collaborated to create a tool that detects writing created by AI. The tool is called AI Writing Check and it’s available for free to any teacher who wants to use it.

To use AI Writing Check you simply have to copy a passage of text of 100 or more words and paste it into AI Writing Check. The tool will then tell you the likelihood that the writing has or has not been created by artificial intelligence. That’s all there is to it. Watch this video to see AI Writing Check in action.

Some More Thoughts About AI Writing Tools

AI Writing Check isn’t foolproof and as is pointed out on the site, students can still develop ways to get around tools designed to detect AI-generated writing. In fact, within minutes of publishing my video about AI Writing Check someone Tweeted at me with a method for trying to fool AI Writing Check.

While some schools are trying to ban tools like ChatGPT, the reality is that students will try to use them anyway. Rather than spending a lot of effort banning AI tools, have discussions with students about responsible use of those tools. I’m sure that someone or some group is already working on incorporating those types of discussions into their digital citizenship curriculum.

Animated Explanations and 50 Tech Tuesday Tips

Animated Explanations is a course that I hosted live late last year. It’s now available in an on-demand format right here!

50 Tech Tuesday Tips is an eBook that I created for busy tech coaches, tech support staff, and media specialists. In it you’ll find 50 ideas and tutorials that you can use as the basis of your own short PD sessions.