US Student Demands College Tuition Fee Refund After Catching Professor Using ChatGPT

A student at a US university has demanded a refund of the tuition fee after discovering that her professor was secretly using artificial intelligence (AI) tools to generate notes. Ella Stapleton, who graduated from Northeastern University this year, lodged a formal complaint after growing suspicious of her business professor's lectures, according to a report in The New York Times.

As per Ms Stapleton, she spotted telltale signs of AI generation, including a "ChatGPT" citation in the bibliography, recurring typos and images depicting figures with extra limbs. She immediately texted a friend in he class who was equally shocked by the revelation.

"Did you see the notes he put on Canvas? He made it with ChatGPT," texted Ms Stapleton, to which the friend replied: "OMG Stop. What the hell?"

Aggrieved that she wasn't getting top-tier education, despite the school's cost and reputation, Ms Stapleton filed a formal complaint with the university's business school, citing the AI use as well as other issues she had with his teaching style. The tuition refund fee amounted to just over Rs 6.8 lakh ($8,000).

"He's telling us not to use it, and then he's using it himself," said Ms Stapleton.

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Claim rejected

However, after a series of meetings, Northeastern ultimately rejected Ms Stapleton's claim. The professor behind the AI notes, Rick Arrowood, acknowledged that he used AI tools such as ChatGPT, the Perplexity AI search engine, and an AI presentation generator called Gamma to write the lectures.

"In hindsight...I wish I would have looked at it more closely. If my experience can be something people can learn from then, OK, that's my happy spot," he told the publication.

As per Northeastern's AI policy, any faculty or student must "provide appropriate attribution when using an AI System to generate content" that might be included in a "scholarly publication, or submitted to anybody, publication or other organisation".

Since its release in 2022, ChatGPT has revolutionised the AI culture across the globe. While students were the early adopters of the technology, it has since been either banned or restricted in most schools and colleges.