Student fights AI cheating allegations for using Grammarly | NewsNation Prime

Marley Stevens, a junior at the University of North Georgia, utilized the popular writing plug-in Grammarly while working on a paper for her criminal justice class. Grammarly, which boasts 30 million users, catches spelling errors, typos, and grammar issues. However, upon submitting her work, Stevens was surprised to receive a zero from her professor. It turns out Grammarly employs generative AI, and a detection service flagged it as "unintentionally cheating."
Stevens, along with Jenny Maxwell from Grammarly, share more details on "NewsNation Prime."

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[KrusadeMinistries]

If Grammarly was, as they report, explicitly authorized at the time she did her paper, then it's case closed... she's innocent. She used the grammar checker that the university itself recommended. She should have her probation lifted, her record cleared, her paper re-graded, the professor/university officials who punished her reprimanded, and she be given a public apology.

[edwinmartinez]

I use grammerly for school. That is scary that happened because most universities provided students with that service.

[Jenn_]

The irony of this story...
The teacher likely used an AI detection tool that is operated using AI 😂

[Isai]

I am dealing with the same problem and i find that offensive from the administration not doing anything to fix it

[zumasa]

I dont understand why its so hard for adults in power to say: "Our Mistake, We punished you incorrectly. We apologize and we will fix this." So many of the wrong people are in the wrong positions. When hiring people for leadership there should be a humbleness assessment

[blueflameSM]

"We're promoting grammarly, but we fucked up and had to delete the evidence...." The gall of the university to promote it, and still put her on academic probation is downright wrong. The professor could have took her, brought her inside and go over the paper. The fact that the universities justification for not appealing it is that she wasn't suspended? Wasn't kicked out of the program? Are you kidding me?

[ROARK-tpni]

This is crazy, it's like saying anybody that uses spell check is cheating.

[Dr_Frog]

Turnitin has a message to the professor that says the AI detection is not 100 percent accurate, and that you should investigate each case on its own merits, something to this effect. I have had students submit work and there was no doubt in my mind it was theirs. That being said Turnitin flagged it. Talked to the students and they used Grammarly to check their work and make suggestions. This is a bigger conversation that academia is having right now across the board. I do think for the interview to be non-biased I would have liked to have seen a representative from Turnitin be represented. I do feel bad for this young lady, it is simple take her work from her freshman year and run it through Grammarly and see if it gets flagged. Best wishes to you and your family this has to be tough.

[behramcooper]

How did they find out that she had used Gramarly? Dies it leave some code in the paper? I don't understand.

[jaimerodriguez-nt]

I tried grammarly once. The paid service has STYLE correction too (not just grammar) . I wonder if she used that and that's why is flagged as AI generated.

[martys]

Before Grammarly flags a student's submittal as having had AI assistance, it should inform the student that that will be the case. Looks like Grammarly did the student a disservice, Jenny. <Correction noted, are below, sorry Jenny>

[necro]

The professor literally relies on AI to tell him whether how to grade. He's lazy.

[lul]

It would be a good idea to properly investigate whether the professor has given zero marks on similarly spurious grounds in the past.

It is more likely that a faculty member at a college is making false accusations against a student as part of an harassment action against that student than that Grammarly usage would sustainably show up as plagiarism

[Yengi-cwox]

We are in an age where universities are advocating using a computer to check to see if another computer 'thinks' acomputer has been used, meanwhile thousands of AI generated essays go untouched. I advocated students do their own work and submit it, and let the university demonstrate foul play, as that is their job. We are on the cusp of qualifications not being worth the paper they are written on

[bluelava]

Math, science, history, everything’s on Siri

[mlerma]

Every AI detection tool has a false positive error rate. Given the volume of papers produced in a university, even a small detection error rate can lead to a significant number of papers being incorrectly flagged. Consequently, various American universities have stopped using AI writing detectors due to concerns over mistakenly accusing students. Additionally, the method of detecting and proving AI-generated writing raises questions. Plagiarism from a text can be proven by presenting the original text that was copied, but proving that a text was generated by AI in a meaningful way poses a challenge. Simply claiming that it contains certain "patterns" (which patterns, exactly?) that are also found in AI-generated text may not be good enough.

[sweetiecandykim]

That GoFundMe is absolutely wild. She can't even capitalise 'i'm', calls herself a college 'kid' and just sounds really juvenile. I totally believe she used it for more than a spell check.

[wrharris]

This makes me mad. They need to cite it as a source or its plagiarism and cheating. Period. You can't submit professionally written work as yours and you didn't write it.

[lesabri]

There is a signature the students have to say the student will not use AI

[kennychan]

How can any one would say grammarly is using to make student copied from the work. If the words are not spoken due to the grammar mistake, that doesn't mean the work would be caught plagarisim from AI. The university professor should not only rely on AI as being 100% accurate, they should just dig through to investigate what is used for. AI detection is creating a false impression and ruining student privacy.