- Australian Catholic University wrongly accused students of AI cheating in nearly 6,000 cases in 2024
- Ninety per cent of academic misconduct cases at ACU related to alleged AI use
- Turnitin's AI detection tool, used by ACU, was known to have accuracy issues for over a year
A major Australian university wrongly accused students of using artificial intelligence (AI) to cheat, whilst using a dubious AI detection system. Australian Catholic University (ACU) registered nearly 6,000 cases of alleged academic misconduct across its nine campuses in 2024, with 90 per cent of cases related to AI use.
Students were notified about the 'academic misconduct' at the end of the semester, which left them with little time to respond, according to a report in ABC News. The onus to prove innocence was on the students, while the university's case hinged on a single AI-generated report that highlighted problematic text.
Students said any attempts to engage ACU and complain about its academic misconduct process were either ignored or dismissed.
"It was already a stressful enough time of my life. And on top of that, I was getting emails from the academic misconduct board saying I needed to write out an explanation as to why I think this might have happened," said Madeleine, 22, a nursing student at the university.
It took ACU six months to clear Madeleine of any wrongdoing, but by that point, the damage was already done.
"I didn't know what to do. Do I go back and study? Do I just give up and do something that's not nursing in a hospital?"
Controversial AI detector
The university reportedly relied on Turnitin, a popular software programme designed to detect plagiarism. In 2023, Turnitin added an AI detector to its toolkit. While the company warns on the website that its AI reports "may not always be accurate", the ACU staffers took its report at face value and accused thousands of cheating.
"According to internal ACU documents, the university was aware of issues with the AI detector tool for more than a year before it scrapped it. ACU abandoned the Turnitin tool in March after finding it to be ineffective," the report highlighted.
Though ACU no longer uses Turnitin, the accusations of AI-related misconduct against the students have led to severe backlash online.
"Does anybody actually take universities seriously anymore?" said one user, while another added: "Imagine telling your students that they will get expelled for using AI when lectures are using AI to mark papers, how f*****g ironic."
A third commented: "I know AI feels like uncharted territory for everyone but it feels like there should be huge consequences for universities slandering people like this. I mean, we're potentially into the realm of class action lawsuits for years of lost earnings at the very least."
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