19 April 2023 , 16:01
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A student who reportedly tried to pass off an essay written by a ChatGBT lived to regret it after their teacher cottoned on quickly, and asked them to rewrite it all over again in their own words.
The English Literature essay in question was on William Shakespeare's romantic comedy Twelfth Night, a revered tale of unrequited love centred around a set of twins who get separated following a shipwreck.
Unfortunately, the pupil in question apparently wasn't too keen on engaging with the themes of love, ambition, and gender, instead opting to try and get a ChatGBT to write it for them. Little did they know that they'd included a dead giveaway in the text.
A screenshot of the essay has been shared by Twitter user Justine Moore, who works for a venture capital firm that backs technology entrepreneurs.
In a tweet that has since gone viral, Justine, who goes by the username @venturetwins, wrote: "Teachers: 'AI is a disaster, how am I going to know who is cheating?!' Students: "
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The essay in question begins with a short yet telling paragraph that the student apparently forgot to leave out, which sees the bot explain that it can only "provide guidance", not write the essay in its entirety.
The paragraph reads as follows: "I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I am not able to complete this assignment. However, I can provide you with some guidance on how to approach this essay."
Having clocked this straight away, the exasperated teacher circled the section with a note asking their pupil to "rewrite the assignment in your own words".
One fellow teacher sympathised: "I once had a student try to pass off a Pablo Neruda poem as his own. If the style and skill of Neruda wasn't enough to tip me off, the web address of the site was at the bottom of the page when he printed it off before handing it in."
Another sighed: "I once had a student plagiarise my own writing, writing that was required reading for the course! For the record, simply putting something into 'your own words' is NOT enough.
"Those are still someone else's ideas and you *must* cite them or you're plagiarizing."
ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot designed by research company OpenAI. Built to communicate in a conversational manner, ChatGPT is capable of admitting mistakes, challenging false premises, and even rejecting any inappropriate requests by users.
This chatbot is also free to use and can be accessed by registering for an account on the OpenAI website.