Use Generative AI Effectively: Academic integrity and AI detection tools

For empirical research on the reliability of AI detection software, librarians recommend:

For more research, see the resources on:

False positives, where AI detection tools incorrectly flag human-written content as AI-generated, can occur due to several reasons, including:

Repetitive Writing
If a text contains substantial repetition, either word-for-word or with close paraphrasing, it may be falsely flagged as AI-generated due to the tool's inability to distinguish between deliberate repetition and AI-generated redundancy.

Bias Against Specific (Non-English) Linguistic Patterns
Some AI detectors may be trained on data that disproportionately represents native English speakers, leading to biases against linguistic patterns and dialects found in non-native English writing.

Neurodivergent Writing Styles
Neurodivergent students, including those with autism, ADHD, and dyslexia, may have writing styles that deviate from conventional academic norms. This can include using repeated phrases, relying on pattern recognition, or having a unique voice in their writing.

Highly Formulaic Writing
Some disciplines, especially the sciences, use formulaic writing structures or very discipline specific vocabulary that may be flagged as AI since variations in these structure or vocabulary is less common.

Academic Integrity and AI

There are many ways a student might use generative AI (GenAI), including to help synthesize class notes and study materials, to summarize text, to explore and narrow research topics, to find sources for writing assignments, to generate text or code and many more uses.

Most Centre professors have a generative AI use policy in their syllabus. It is the student’s responsibility to:

• Make sure they carefully read and understand the generative AI use policy for each of their courses.
• Communicate openly and transparently with the professor if they are using generative AI and they are unsure if their use of generative AI might violate the professor’s policy.
• Understand that, even if a course policy does allow the use of generative AI, content created by generative AI must be cited whether it is paraphrased or quoted.

If a professor does not have a generative AI policy in their syllabus, it is your responsibility to be transparent with your professor, communicate openly about how you would like to use generative AI and respect the feedback from those discussions.

How do I cite AI in MLA style?

How do I cite AI in Chicago style?

How do I cite AI in APA style?

Use Grammarly

While Turnitin states their AI detection should not flag standard Grammarly use, when you install Grammarly, it installs with its generative AI writing tool enabled. Using the AI writing tool will definitely be flagged by Turnitin.

Grammarly's AI writing tool, GrammarlyGo, is designed to generate text. Content produced by it will definitely be flagged by Turnitin's AI detection.

If a student heavily relies on standard Grammarly's suggestions and doesn't rewrite them in their own words, this might be flagged by Turnitin.

Use add-ins, like Copilot, Gemini or Wordtune

Copilot is Microsoft's AI assistant and Gemini and Wordtune are Google Docs AI assistants. They assist with content generation, editing, summarizing, and formatting and will definitely be flagged as AI by Turnitin.

Use a citation generator

Some citation generators, like Quillbot and numerous others, are based on generative AI to automatically convert URLs to citations. They will be flagged as AI.

Copy or closely paraphrase material from public sources (like Wikipedia)

Many online sources, like Wikipedia articles or news blogs, were actually created using generative AI. If students closely paraphrase text from from these AI-generated sources, Turnitin will flag it as AI.

Use ideas generated by AI during topic exploration

If a student uses Google to explore a topic, reads the automatically generated AI overview at the top of the Google results, gets ideas from it and closely paraphrases text from from it, Turnitin will flag it as AI.

Actually using text created by generative AI

If you copy sentences (or even, sometimes, sentence clauses) from generative AI, Turnitin will flag this content as AI.

Microsoft Editor 

Microsoft Editor is a “closed source AI-powered writing assistant” which is available for Word, Outlook, and other Office 365 products. It includes the essentials in a writing assistant, such as a grammar and spell checker, but ALSO uses co-Pilot (Microsoft's generative AI) to provide suggestions about clarity, conciseness, voice, and other generative AI changes to text. Using suggestions from Microsoft Editor is flagged by TurnItIn in the same way as Grammarly and ChatGPT.

Turn off the AI portion of Microsoft Editor

• Go to File > Options > Proofing > Writing Style > Settings > Grammar and Refinement
• Scroll down to options for the categories “Clarity,” “Conciseness,” “Formality,” “Inclusiveness,” “Resume,” “Sensitive Geopolitical References,” and “Vocabulary” then unclick all of the options there

Google Chrome  “Help Me Write” feature

Turn it off (using Chrome browser):

• Go to the three dots in the top right corner, then select
• Settings > Privacy and security > Site settings > Additional content settings > Offer writing help > (toggle off)
• Then close the Chrome browser and restart it

Grammarly’s AI features

Grammarly’s AI tools are turned on by default. Turn AI tools off in Grammarly via Account Settings > Feature Customization