My American university recently instituted that using AI to write papers will result in academic misconduct. However, I have been using Grammarly before they included AI (and no, I do not use Grammarly Go as I do not pay for it). On top of that, I am writing a paper for my class, and every time I put my paper through the AI detector, it says, "AI detected." What should I do?
I want to make one thing clear. I do not use AI to generate stories or even brainstorm. Though I feel like I'm cheating when I use Grammarly for spelling and grammar. I'm not ripping off anyone's stories under any circumstances. But is the free version of Grammarly ethical to use? You can only check spelling and grammar on the free version.
Videos
I've seen posts/comments that some people's essays failed the AI detection when they did not use any AI on assignments. How likely is this to happen?
It's one of my biggest fears for college (I start in Spring) and the only AI I use is Grammarly for general grammar mistakes and sometimes for "clarity" which edits some of my sentences for the "free premium suggestion."
Would this be a problem for college essays and assignments? I have not yet begun writing essay assignments but have used Grammarly for some of my scholarship essays, but none have had a problem with AI unless they say you can not use it. (In which case I don't use Grammarly)
Does Grammarly fall under that category? Should I be worried about failing assignments if I use it? Should I be worried about false detections even if I disable Grammarly for the assignment?
Please share your experience with Grammarly and assignments/essays. It would be greatly appreciated!
Just want to know your input
I got a ‘waf’ for one of my subjects last Friday and emailed my subject coordinator for the reason. This was my first time knowing and receiving it. I received the reply back today that my final essay was detected by Turnitin AI detection with a potential issue, so it was sent to the academic integrity team. I was told that I should wait patiently as there is a high increase in the cases to be examined.
I did not use any AI to generate the content of my essay, but I do use Grammarly. I don’t have the premium version of it. I use Grammarly to check my grammar, find synonyms for vocabulary and have a habit of trying to paraphrase those sentences with yellow lines to achieve a higher score in it (those who use Grammarly may understand what I mean) (The score always give me a sense of confident). I have done this since I was in high school and right now I am in my second year.
Before the deadline of the essay, our subject coordinator made an announcement asking us not to use any AI tool to generate content for the essay, and the example given included Grammarly. I didn’t care much about it as I believed that she was referring to the premium version and I wouldn’t use Grammarly for generating essays. But right now I am starting to question it… Is the normal version of Grammarly classified as AI writing right now…?
I did research and wrote my essay for more than 10 days… I do have my web history to prove that I did my own research…
I believe the time of waiting will be really tough for students. I am curious about what and how the team is examining right now. Why don’t they just organize a meeting and ask us to explain our essay?
Today when explaining the syllabus my professor said Grammarly counts as AI and it should not be used in essays I was quite startled when he said this why would grammarly count as cheating?
I've noticed that Grammarly has come up a lot on this sub in the context of cheating, faculty woes about students who don't realize that using it is cheating, and in the same breath as using ChatGPT.
I've been a bit puzzled by this. I'm curious to hear your perspective at what point on the continuum from Microsoft Word to Grammarly to ChatGPT something becomes cheating.
Was using the spellcheck feature introduced in Microsoft Word 2003 a form of cheating? If not, why not?
What about Microsoft Word's current version, which not only corrects spelling, but now has a full-blown "editor" replacing spellcheck?
It corrects grammar, makes suggests for conciseness, suggests synonyms, offers readability statistics, makes revision suggestions based on your selection of "formal," "professional," or "casual" writing styles, offering corrections of everything from "colloquialisms" and incorrect "subjunctive mood" to a host of things we probably couldn't have previously imagined ten years ago, such as correcting for "sensitive geopolitical references," inclusiveness corrections from various "biases" from "age" to "socioeconomic", and vocabulary from "cliches" to "weak verbs."
Is using this editor cheating? If not, why not?
Is the cheating boundary that Grammarly can not just go through the corrections and suggestions one-by-one as Word does, but also implement a series of revision automatically with one click rather than 50 individual clicks? If so, is this different than Microsoft Word's autocorrect feature for spelling and some grammar mistakes?
Since Word seems to not correct all grammar automatically because the confidence parameter is not cranked up higher (merely underlining things in red or telling you later in the editor), at what point would Word's automatic changes constitute cheating?
To me, the three relevant concepts at play are: "corrections," "revisions," and "composition."
"Corrections:" usually not cheating
"Revisions:" sometimes cheating
"Composition:" usually cheating
...but between the three, the boundaries are fuzzy
Corrections ######## Revisions ######## Composition
...and from Microsoft Word to Grammarly to ChatGPT, there is a kind of continuum, but I can't help thinkings that they do not correspond as well as we think to the above categories. It's less:
Corrections -------------------- Revisions -------------------- Composition
Word########################Grammarly#########ChatGPT
and more like:
Corrections -------------------- Revisions -------------------- Composition
###################### Word# Grammarly#########ChatGPT
I can see why an overreliance on Grammarly can be a problem, especially in writing heavy subjects, but unless it's something explicit like a composition course, I don't quite see how it rises to the level of cheating beyond what's currently offered within Microsoft Word's "proofing" functions.
Those are my thoughts on the issue. I'd like to hear what others think.
Hello, first time posting. I'm currently writing my first ff and I'm already three chapters in. However I'm from Mexico and english is not my first language so I'm really struggling with grammar, typos and such.
I saw an add promoting Grammarly and I thought maybe it would help me with my writing but I feel like other authors would judge me for "cheating" so I wanted to hear your opinion on the topic, thx🙏
Genuinely wondering, because I've been using it for my fics for a bit and I don't know whether that's bad or not? The text is entirely written by me, I just check on grammar or spelling mistakes n such.
I'd say the only thing that would be cheating is plagiarism and having it written by AI
I wish everyone used some sort of grammar/spell checker before posting a fic. Makes it hard to read when there are typos and grammar mistakes that could be easily avoided
no more so than a native speaker using it. or anyone having spellcheck on.
My middle school aged daughter was showing me a recent assignment she completed for her EL class and I noticed that she was using Grammarly to help with punctuation and to help rephrasing sentences for clarity. Is this considered cheating?
In the past I would have said it's fine, no question, but grammarly has added a lot of AI features that do more major revision.
If your daughter is only using it to correct clear errors, it's fine, but I would make sure she understands not to allow it to rewrite her own words. It would also be a good idea to check with her teacher.
Yes. It's AI usage. It even tells you on the site that it is AI usage.
Is your daughter learning as she uses AI? Is she learning the grammar rules for the stuff it's fixing for her or is she just treating it like a dry cleaning service where she drops it off and then picks it up all fixed? If the latter she's not learning squat and it is going to make her further and further behind.
Then she'll be one of my college students who bombs in class writing activities, which we're all going back to bc of AI.
Choose her future wisely.
I'm in an MPA program taking a higher level course. One of the students is an English language learner. He did a presentation on Wednesday that was clearly not written in his own English and it came along with a paper that also was clearly not his own writing. I accused him of using generative ai to produce the work and he was very offended and insisted that the conteiwas his own, he had just had grammerly rewrite it for him because his englywasnt sufficient. I believe him. Once he actually gave the presentation he seemed to have an understanding of the topic. But I still feel that he cheated. Is it cheating to have software rewrite your paper? We have a lot of foreign students in my program and many are my friends byt I don't think they do this.
I have a final paper due on a few days. I used grammarly to check my grammar and shorten sentences. My uni uses Turnitin, so naturally I used a few different softwares for plagiarism checks just to be sure I didn't miss anything. My paper now shows as 70% AI?? Im so confused??
I am a second year college student taking a 300 level history class. I recently used grammarly premium to help on my paper like I always do. And by help I mean clicking on the recommended popups as I write. When I turned my paper in, Turnitin.com flagged my paper for 44% AI usage throughout the paper where I used grammarly. I talked to my professor and he is failing me for the assignment due to using AI. What is the best way to refute this and hopefully get a passing grade on this assignment?