Purna Bose Thanks for that clarification. Can I confirm that your testing includes both the free tier of Grammarly and the paid-for product that has a "rewrite my sentence" feature?  Have you done similar testing with Quillbot and its paraphrasing capability?

Steve Bentley Yes, our testing has largely been based on the free version of Grammarly, So if the detector is flagging content as AI it may have been written using GrammarlyGo. Our investigations on Quillbot are ongoing. 

Gill Rowell Hi Gill, I think there's a bit of confusion here:  Grammarly has THREE services.

Free: Basic flagging of errors for the user to fix themselves
Paid: Has tools that can rewrite sentences/paragraphs to improve the English
GO: This is a ChatGPT clone/rebadge

It's the paid platform where there is ambiguity, whether the rewritten sentences/paragraphs look sufficiently like AI output that it is misdetected, which is what students are claiming.  (Obviously different institutions will have their own policy on whether that rewriting is acceptable or not)

Steve Bentley  I used the paid version of Grammarly for my own personal test. I accepted all the changes and made edits according to Grammarly's suggestions but still was not flagged for any AI use. I even rewrote/reworded the sentences it suggested I improve. I'm wondering how these children are claiming it's Grammarly when, on our end, GrammarlyGO is disabled and my own personal test proved the paid version didn't detect any AI. 

Steve Bentley All of my writing preferences are set to "on," too--I'm getting the full dose of what Grammarly Premium offers minus GrammarlyGo. The same goes for my students. 

Gill Rowell Could you please update about the Quillbot investigation?

Malik I don't have any specific updates on Quillbot. In our AI Innovation Lab, we have conducted tests using open sourced paraphrasing tools (including different LLMs) and in most cases, our detector has retained its effectiveness and is able to identify text as AI-generated even when a paraphrasing tool has been used to change the AI output.

Gill Rowell Thank you for your response. Actually, I wanted to confirm that if an AI paraphrasing tool is used on human generated content (to sound smarter or improve structure etc) does turnitin flag it as AI too? 

Hi Gill Rowell just to support Malik's comment, the concern is about avoiding false positive detections where tools like Quillbot and Grammarly have been used to improve a student's authentic writing. This is a common claim from students who are challenged about a high AI score from Turnitin.

I understand that there may be times when using these tools may trigger the AI indicator. You may find some of our resources on false positives useful. Firstly this blog post and video from our Product team. Additionally, some of our pedagogic resources from my colleagues on the TLI team. Using the AI detector, just like the similarity report, is just one indicator of possible misconduct and may be used a starting point for conversations with students about their use of these tools when completing their assessed work. 

Additionally you can always ask our Support team to take a look at any paper where there may be doubt. You can contact them by emailing tiisupport@turnitin.com.