Turnitin has been a cornerstone of academic integrity for decades, and its AI Detector is an evolution of its mission, designed to address the challenges of generative AI in education. Integrated directly into the familiar Turnitin workflow that millions of educators and students already use, the tool aims to identify text written by models like ChatGPT within student submissions. Its greatest strength is its seamless integration into over 100 Learning Management Systems (LMS), making it an easy-to-deploy, institution-wide solution for checking for both plagiarism and AI content simultaneously.
However, the tool is plagued by significant and well-documented issues with false positives. Numerous students, including neurodivergent writers and those who use formal or highly structured language, report that their original work is frequently and incorrectly flagged as AI-generated. This unreliability has led to wrongful accusations, student anxiety, and a breakdown of trust between students and educators. While Turnitin claims high accuracy, real-world use shows it struggles to differentiate between sophisticated human writing and AI text. Because of these flaws, it should be used as a preliminary indicator to start a conversation, not as a definitive verdict for academic misconduct.
