You think a student used ChatGPT. Now what?
When I started this site in 2002 the big worry was kids copying from websites. Then it was essay mills, then paying a cousin, then spinning software that swapped every third word for a synonym and turned "the war ended" into "the conflict concluded." Now almost every teacher who writes to me is asking about the same thing: AI.
The tools change. The awful feeling doesn't. You're reading a paper, and somewhere around the second page your stomach drops a little, and you think, I don't think this kid wrote this.
Here's what I'd do. Not because I'm a teacher (I'm not, I just build the tool), but because I've heard about an awful lot of these situations over twenty-four years, and the ones that go badly tend to go badly in the same handful of ways.
1. Don't do anything tonight
Seriously. Don't email the student, don't email the parents, don't type a zero into the gradebook. Put the paper down and look at it again tomorrow. Half the time it still looks bad. The other half you notice it's just a decent paper by a kid who had a good week, and you're really glad you didn't send that email.
2. Collect the boring evidence first
Before you talk to anyone, spend fifteen minutes on this:
- Compare it to their in-class writing. Something handwritten, or written in front of you. Does it sound like the same person? Similar sentence length, similar mistakes, similar sense of humor?
- Look up two or three of the sources. Invented citations are one of the strongest signs there is. A real source can be found. A fake one can't, and that's very hard to explain away.
- Check the version history if it was written in Google Docs or Word online. Did the paper grow over a few days, with edits and deletions, or did the whole thing land in a single paste?
- Run it through a checker. Mine looks for both copied passages and AI-style writing. If chunks of it turn up on a website, that's a different and much more clear-cut conversation. If the AI score is high, write it down, but please read what that score can and can't tell you before you lean on it.
I go through the specific things that tend to give AI writing away in top 5 signs a paper was written by AI.
3. Know your own rules before the meeting
This sounds obvious and it trips up a lot of people. What does your syllabus actually say? Is AI allowed for brainstorming? For an outline? Is Grammarly okay? What about Grammarly's rewrite button, which is basically AI now? What does your school's academic integrity policy say you have to do, and who do you have to tell?
A lot of students honestly don't know where the line is, because every class draws it in a different place. "I used it to fix my grammar" and "I had it write the whole thing" are not the same, and they shouldn't be handled the same.
4. Talk to the student, and don't lead with the accusation
This is the part that actually decides most cases, so it's worth doing well. Keep it private and keep it calm. Instead of "did you use ChatGPT?", which gets you a reflexive no, try something like "I'd love to hear how you put this together." Then ask real questions:
- What was the hardest part to write?
- Why did you go with this source? Where did you find it?
- This paragraph here, can you tell me more about what you meant?
- If you had another week, what would you change?
Someone who wrote the paper can usually talk about it for ten minutes without breaking a sweat. They remember the paragraph that fought them. They have opinions about it. Someone who didn't write it tends to get vague fast, or repeats the paper back to you almost word for word.
And please don't open with "the detector says 92%." It puts the student on the defensive against a machine they can't argue with, and the number isn't strong enough to carry that weight anyway.
5. Decide what happens next
If they own up, a lot of teachers have them rewrite it, in class or with check-ins along the way, and treat it as a learning thing the first time. If they didn't do it, say thank you, mean it, and move on. If you still honestly can't tell, an in-class rewrite or a short oral defense of the paper settles it without anybody having to prove a negative.
If it goes to your school's formal process, write down what you actually saw: the citations that didn't exist, the version history, how the conversation went. That holds up a lot better than a percentage from a website. Including mine.
Making it less likely next time
You can't AI-proof an assignment completely, but you can make it a lot more annoying to cheat on than to just do:
- Ask for drafts and outlines along the way, not just the final paper.
- Tie prompts to things only your class knows. A discussion you had, a local issue, the student's own experience.
- Do some of the writing in class.
- Talk with them about why you care. Most kids aren't evil, they're tired and scared of a bad grade. If they understand that the writing is the point, not the paper, some of them will just do it.
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