Dear Students,
You may have seen in the press recently concerns expressed over AI generated essays and assignments. I am writing to let you know that "Turnitin", who provide the IRM and many Universities, have enhanced their similarity detection software to incorporate AI detection.
Both the Similarity tool and the AI tool provide us with initial indications of potential issues. Where there is a flag raised the assessment team review the assignment to establish what has happened. For example, a high similarity score may just mean that a student has used a lot of material that is not their own but is appropriately referenced. Whilst this is not plagiarism it would mean limited marks being awarded to a student. As far as AI is concerned we will apply the same approach, however the use of AI is a much more serious breach.
I have to report that we have received our first AI flag in a March 2023 submission and we will be investigating this over the coming weeks.
I would urge all students to be careful when preparing assignments as you could lose marks, or in the case of plagiarism or the us of AI software to generate all or part of an assignment, be subjected to a disciplinary process.
Doug Smith Chief Examiner