Students: what to do when you are accused of using AI

A tutor, marker or misconduct panel believes an assignment was generated.

What is at stake

A mark, a module, or a degree. Academic processes have real consequences and real deadlines.

Your evidence position

You almost always have a right to a process: to see the evidence, to respond, and to appeal. Detector vendors say their own output should not be the sole basis for a finding. Turnitin says it about its AI writing report; GPTZero says it about punishing students.

Do this first

Request the detector report itself, in full, and the institution's policy on how such reports may be used. Then put your process evidence in front of a human, on paper.

The trap

Trying to win by arguing the detector is biased or broken. It may be true. It is not your defence. Your defence is that you can show how you worked.

Related pages that will help

Student disputes usually turn on the same few things: what a detector actually claims about its own accuracy, which pieces of evidence survive scrutiny, and whether a contract put the risk on you. The pages below cover each.