Turnitin has a new feature that detects if a paper was written by an AI generator, such as ChatGPT. The AI writing indicator that has been added to the generated report will show an overall percentage of the paper that may have been AI-generated. Watch the video to learn more!
When grading papers in Turnitin, you will see this inbox with the submitted papers. Notice, the similarity scores are indicated on the right. You will not see the AI-generated score here.
The percentage generated by Turnitin’s AI writing detection model is different and independent from the Similarity Score, and the AI writing highlights are not included in the Similarity Score. You will need to view the AI indicator score.
To view the AI indicator score, click on the individual paper to open the submission. On the bottom right, you will see a blue box with “AI”. The percentage provided is the AI indicator score listing the percentage of the paper that Turnitin estimates was written by AI. This score of 83% suggests that 83% of the paper was AI generated, as shown below. The paper completely written by ChatGPT received a score of 100% on the AI indicator.
Click the blue AI button with the percentage score to review the paper further. The highlighted text is the portion that Turnitin detects as AI-generated. The text that is not highlighted has been classified as human-generated. For this sample paper, the Turnitin AI detector has correctly distinguished the AI-generated text from the human-generated text.
What does the percentage mean? What do I do with it?
The percentage shown in the AI writing detection indicator and in the AI writing report is the amount of qualifying text within the submission that Turnitin’s AI writing detection model determines was generated by AI (with 98% confidence based on data that was collected and verified in a controlled lab environment).
What do the different color indicators mean?
Blue with a percentage between 0 and 100: The submission has been processed successfully. The displayed percentage indicates the amount of qualifying text within the submission that Turnitin’s AI writing detection model determines was generated by AI.
Gray with no percentage displayed (- -): The AI writing detection indicator is unable to process this submission.
Error ( ! ): This error means that Turnitin has failed to process the submission.
Can students view the AI detection score when submitting their paper?
The AI detection results will not be visible to students; only instructors and administrators will be able to see the results of the detection tool.
What can I do if I feel that the AI indicator is incorrect? How does Turnitin’s indicator address false positives?
There can be false positives (incorrectly flagging human-written text as AI-generated), especially lists without a lot of structural variation, text that literally repeats itself, or text that has been paraphrased without developing new ideas. If the indicator shows a higher amount of AI writing in such text, we advise you to take that into consideration when making decisions based on AI detection.
Will the capabilities work for submissions in a language other than English?
Turnitin does not currently support languages other than English but are exploring non-English support.
Does Safe Assign have the ability to detect AI use?
Safe Assign does not currently have an AI detection tool.