About two-thirds of teachers report regularly using tools for detecting AI-generated content. At that scale, even tiny error rates can add up quickly.
BLOOMBERG
After taking some time off from college early in the pandemic to start a family, Moira Olmsted was eager to return to school. For months, she juggled a full-time job and a toddler to save up for a self-paced program that allowed her to learn remotely. Seven months pregnant with her second child, Olmsted enrolled in online courses at Central Methodist University in 2023, studying to become a teacher.
Just weeks into the fall semester, Olmsted submitted a written assignment in a required class—one of three reading summaries she had to do each week. Soon after, she received her grade: zero. When she approached her professor, Olmsted said she was told that an AI detection tool had determined her work was likely generated by artificial intelligence. In fact, the teacher said, her writing had been flagged at least once before.
For Olmsted, now 24, the accusation was a “punch in the gut.” It was also a threat to her standing at the university. “It’s just kind of like, oh my gosh, this is what works for us right now—and it could be taken away for something I didn’t do,” she says.
Olmsted disputed the accusation to her teacher and a student coordinator, stressing that she has autism spectrum disorder and writes in a formulaic manner that might be mistakenly seen as AI-generated, according to emails viewed by Bloomberg Businessweek. The grade was ultimately changed, but not before she received a strict warning: If her work was flagged again, the teacher would treat it the same way they would with plagiarism.
