The popularization of generative artificial intelligence has unfolded rather quickly since OpenAI introduced us to its ChatGPT in 2022. OpenAI’s chat, as well as dozens of similar tools that came after it, have already deeply rooted into our lives. They are broadly used for a great variety of purposes, including scholarly.
In a nutshell, generative artificial intelligence is a model that understands user queries through natural language processing (NLP) and has the power to produce new content in seconds.
To students, it may seem like a straightforward solution for their academic writing. But is it really a good solution? And how to check if an essay is AI generated?
Why Do Students Use AI in Writing?
Academic writing has always been a massive challenge for students of all levels. Not only does it make a huge part of the curriculum but also requires a lot of skills, knowledge, and commitment to handle.
Moreover, recent studies reveal that academic writing anxiety stands out as one of the most prominent mental health concerns in students, correlating with lower grades and self-esteem.
At the end of the day, as many as 45% of students use procrastination as the primary strategy to address academic writing anxiety, leading to the fact that students almost never feel they have enough time to tackle their essays.
Given all these challenges, it’s no surprise students are constantly seeking help with their academic writing to save time, overcome anxiety, and boost grades.
Before the rise of generative AI, they relied mainly on professional writing services, such as EssayPro that enabled them to get quality papers written by experienced writers.
Yet, AI that can produce essays in seconds and for free quickly became a popular alternative, though it may have more downsides than seems at first glance. Not to mention there are a few ways to check if essay is AI generated.
School’s Policies Against AI and Consequences of Using It
For all students using AI for writing (or considering doing so), it’s important to note that most schools, colleges, and universities consider it a form of plagiarism. Respectively, it can cause a number of penalties, including:
- The necessity to resubmit the work.
- Plagiarism accusation.
- Lowered grade.
- Undermined reputation.
- Temporary suspension or even expulsion.
That is, compared to human writers, artificial intelligence can produce human-like papers in almost no time and at no extra cost. Nevertheless, the consequences can be heavy. For example, EssayPro reviews, on the contrary, demonstrate that writing services help students improve their academic standing.
How to Tell If Someone Used AI to Write an Essay?
So, the consequences can be tough. But what if a student doesn’t get caught using AI in essays?
The truth is that detecting artificial intelligence is rather easy to detect in writing. The primary signs include:
- Inconsistent tone of voice and style.
- Broad and superficial statements with no detail.
- Common repetitions.
- Invalid, outdated, or made-up facts.
- Lack of coherence, logic, and critical analysis.
- Lack of human touch and personal experience/opinion.
- Use of a lot of AI-typical words, such as “robust,” “vital,” “ensure,” and others.
These general signs explain how to tell if AI wrote an essay. Yet, there are also other, more accurate ways to detect artificial intelligence.
How to Check If an Essay Is AI-Generated?
Sometimes, the general signs described above can be misleading or mistaken. For example, the use of AI-typical words might be just a part of a student’s own writing style or common repetitions might just signal a lack of academic writing skills.
However, this doesn’t mean that AI can’t be detected otherwise. In fact, now, there are plenty of tools that make it quick and simple.
Basically, an AI essay generator checker is a tool that works similarly to plagiarism checkers. All a user needs to do is insert a text into the tool and wait for the analysis to complete. However, instead of checking the text against a large database, such tools rather measure its specific characteristics to detect if there is a chance of AI.
Some tools available out there include:
- Grammarly
- QuillBot
- Scribbr
- ZeroGPT
- Copyleaks, etc.
While all these tools are quite popular, when it comes to scanning academic papers, in particular, many teachers and professors rely on Turnitin as the best AI essay checker. Turnitin is widely known as an effective and accurate solution for academic integrity.
For years, it had been used as a plagiarism checker that academic institutions count on. After the rise of AI, Turnitin also implemented its own AI detection solution. So, no wonder educators prefer it over other available solutions.
How to Avoid AI in Writing
Given strict policies against artificial intelligence in educational facilities and hefty penalties that one can face if accused of using it, it becomes clear that modern students have to go the extra mile to confirm there is no AI in their papers before submitting them.
As discussed earlier, it’s possible to use a specialized AI or human essay checker to do this. However, this might not be the best solution to avoid AI in writing.
As reported by many users, including academic facilities such as MIT, AI detectors may not be as effective as promised. They often miss the mark, letting AI-generated content slip through and, on the contrary, flagging human texts as AI.
This fact means that relying solely on a college essay AI checker might not be effective. Yet, there are a few things students can do to avoid AI in their writing:
- Avoiding reliance on AI tools for writing.
- Always adding a human touch if using AI for idea generation or research.
- Adopting effective paraphrasing techniques to add authenticity.
- Checking plagiarism score before assignment submission. It’s easy to do using free plagiarism checkers, for example, one offered by EssayPro.
Conclusion
No matter how fast or convenient it may seem, using AI in academic writing undermines the learning process and can lead to a range of penalties, including expulsion. The truth is that modern educators know how to check an essay for AI and detect it with a fairly high accuracy, meaning that using AI and not getting caught is quite unlikely.
Given this, it’s crucial that students know about ways to avoid AI in their writing and adopt more effective ways to handle their essays, for example, by delegating them to reliable writing services like EssayPro.
