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Graph: A dataset of essays were graded by professional graders on a range of 1-10 and cross-referenced against the detailed criteria within the rubric to determine their real scores. Deviation was defined by the variation of scores from the real score. The graph contains an overall score (the average of all criterias) as well as each individual criteria. The criteria are the premade criteria available on Smodin's AI Grader, listed in the graph as column headings. The custom rubrics were made using Smodin's AI Grader custom criteria generator to produce each criteria listed in Smodin's premade criterias (the same criteria as the column headings). The overall score for Smodin Premade Rubrics matched human scores 73% of the time with our advanced AI, while custom rubrics generated by Smodin's custom rubric generator matched human grades 82% of the time with our advanced AI. The average deviation from the real scores for all criteria is shown above.

* Rubrics created using Smodin's AI custom criteria matched human scores 82% of the time on the advanced AI setting. Smodin's premade criteria matched human scores 73% of the time. When the AI score differed from the human scores, 86% of the time the score only differed by 1 point on a 10 point scale.

** The AI grader provides 100% consistency, meaning that the same essay will produce the same score every time it's graded. All grades used in the data were repeated 3 times and produced 100% consistency across all 3 grading attempts.

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How ChatGPT (and other AI chatbots) can help you write an essay

ChatGPT  is capable of doing many different things very well, with one of the biggest standout features being its ability to compose all sorts of text within seconds, including songs, poems, bedtime stories, and essays . 

The chatbot's writing abilities are not only fun to experiment with, but can help provide assistance with everyday tasks. Whether you are a student, a working professional, or just getting stuff done, we constantly take time out of our day to compose emails, texts, posts, and more. ChatGPT can help you claim some of that time back by helping you brainstorm and then compose any text you need. 

How to use ChatGPT to write: Code | Excel formulas | Resumes  | Cover letters  

Contrary to popular belief, ChatGPT can do much more than just write an essay for you from scratch (which would be considered plagiarism). A more useful way to use the chatbot is to have it guide your writing process. 

Below, we show you how to use ChatGPT to do both the writing and assisting, as well as some other helpful writing tips. 

How ChatGPT can help you write an essay

If you are looking to use ChatGPT to support or replace your writing, here are five different techniques to explore. 

It is also worth noting before you get started that other AI chatbots can output the same results as ChatGPT or are even better, depending on your needs.

Also: The best AI chatbots of 2024: ChatGPT and alternatives

For example,  Copilot  has access to the internet, and as a result, it can source its answers from recent information and current events. Copilot also includes footnotes linking back to the original source for all of its responses, making the chatbot a more valuable tool if you're writing a paper on a more recent event, or if you want to verify your sources.

Regardless of which AI chatbot you pick, you can use the tips below to get the most out of your prompts and from AI assistance.

1. Use ChatGPT to generate essay ideas

Before you can even get started writing an essay, you need to flesh out the idea. When professors assign essays, they generally give students a prompt that gives them leeway for their own self-expression and analysis. 

As a result, students have the task of finding the angle to approach the essay on their own. If you have written an essay recently, you know that finding the angle is often the trickiest part -- and this is where ChatGPT can help. 

Also: ChatGPT vs. Copilot: Which AI chatbot is better for you?

All you need to do is input the assignment topic, include as much detail as you'd like -- such as what you're thinking about covering -- and let ChatGPT do the rest. For example, based on a paper prompt I had in college, I asked:

Can you help me come up with a topic idea for this assignment, "You will write a research paper or case study on a leadership topic of your choice." I would like it to include Blake and Mouton's Managerial Leadership Grid, and possibly a historical figure. 

Also: I'm a ChatGPT pro but this quick course taught me new tricks, and you can take it for free

Within seconds, the chatbot produced a response that provided me with the title of the essay, options of historical figures I could focus my article on, and insight on what information I could include in my paper, with specific examples of a case study I could use. 

2. Use the chatbot to create an outline

Once you have a solid topic, it's time to start brainstorming what you actually want to include in the essay. To facilitate the writing process, I always create an outline, including all the different points I want to touch upon in my essay. However, the outline-writing process is usually tedious. 

With ChatGPT, all you have to do is ask it to write the outline for you. 

Also: Thanks to my 5 favorite AI tools, I'm working smarter now

Using the topic that ChatGPT helped me generate in step one, I asked the chatbot to write me an outline by saying: 

Can you create an outline for a paper, "Examining the Leadership Style of Winston Churchill through Blake and Mouton's Managerial Leadership Grid."

After a couple of seconds, the chatbot produced a holistic outline divided into seven different sections, with three different points under each section. 

This outline is thorough and can be condensed for a shorter essay or elaborated on for a longer paper. If you don't like something or want to tweak the outline further, you can do so either manually or with more instructions to ChatGPT. 

As mentioned before, since Copilot is connected to the internet, if you use Copilot to produce the outline, it will even include links and sources throughout, further expediting your essay-writing process. 

3. Use ChatGPT to find sources

Now that you know exactly what you want to write, it's time to find reputable sources to get your information. If you don't know where to start, you can just ask ChatGPT. 

Also: How to make ChatGPT provide sources and citations

All you need to do is ask the AI to find sources for your essay topic. For example, I asked the following: 

Can you help me find sources for a paper, "Examining the Leadership Style of Winston Churchill through Blake and Mouton's Managerial Leadership Grid."

The chatbot output seven sources, with a bullet point for each that explained what the source was and why it could be useful. 

Also:   How to use ChatGPT to make charts and tables

The one caveat you will want to be aware of when using ChatGPT for sources is that it does not have access to information after 2021, so it will not be able to suggest the freshest sources. If you want up-to-date information, you can always use Copilot. 

Another perk of using Copilot is that it automatically links to sources in its answers. 

4. Use ChatGPT to write an essay

It is worth noting that if you take the text directly from the chatbot and submit it, your work could be considered a form of plagiarism since it is not your original work. As with any information taken from another source, text generated by an AI should be clearly identified and credited in your work.

Also: ChatGPT will now remember its past conversations with you (if you want it to)

In most educational institutions, the penalties for plagiarism are severe, ranging from a failing grade to expulsion from the school. A better use of ChatGPT's writing features would be to use it to create a sample essay to guide your writing. 

If you still want ChatGPT to create an essay from scratch, enter the topic and the desired length, and then watch what it generates. For example, I input the following text: 

Can you write a five-paragraph essay on the topic, "Examining the Leadership Style of Winston Churchill through Blake and Mouton's Managerial Leadership Grid."

Within seconds, the chatbot gave the exact output I required: a coherent, five-paragraph essay on the topic. You could then use that text to guide your own writing. 

Also: ChatGPT vs. Microsoft Copilot vs. Gemini: Which is the best AI chatbot?

At this point, it's worth remembering how tools like ChatGPT work : they put words together in a form that they think is statistically valid, but they don't know if what they are saying is true or accurate. 

As a result, the output you receive might include invented facts, details, or other oddities. The output might be a useful starting point for your own work, but don't expect it to be entirely accurate, and always double-check the content. 

5. Use ChatGPT to co-edit your essay

Once you've written your own essay, you can use ChatGPT's advanced writing capabilities to edit the piece for you. 

You can simply tell the chatbot what you want it to edit. For example, I asked ChatGPT to edit our five-paragraph essay for structure and grammar, but other options could have included flow, tone, and more. 

Also: AI meets AR as ChatGPT is now available on the Apple Vision Pro

Once you ask the tool to edit your essay, it will prompt you to paste your text into the chatbot. ChatGPT will then output your essay with corrections made. This feature is particularly useful because ChatGPT edits your essay more thoroughly than a basic proofreading tool, as it goes beyond simply checking spelling. 

You can also co-edit with the chatbot, asking it to take a look at a specific paragraph or sentence, and asking it to rewrite or fix the text for clarity. Personally, I find this feature very helpful. 

How to use ChatGPT

The best ai chatbots: chatgpt isn't the only one worth trying, meta releases openeqa to test how ai understands the world, for home robots and smart glasses.

The fastest way to grade essays

EssayGrader is an AI powered grading assistant that gives high quality, specific and accurate writing feedback for essays. Thousands of teachers use EssayGrader to manage their grading load everyday. On average it takes a teacher 10 minutes to grade a single essay, with EssayGrader that time is cut down to 30 seconds That's a 95% reduction in the time it takes to grade an essay, with the same results.

How we've done

EssayGrader analyzes essays with the power of AI. Our software is trained on massive amounts of diverse text data, inlcuding books, articles and websites. This gives us the ability to provide accurate and detailed writing feedback to students and save teachers loads of time. We are the perfect AI powered grading assitant.

EssayGrader analyzes essays for grammar, punctuation, spelling, coherence, clarity and writing style errors. We provide detailed reports of the errors found and suggestions on how to fix those errors. Our error reports help speed up grading times by quickly highlighting mistakes made in the essay.

Bulk uploading

Uploading a single essay at a time, then waiting for it to complete is a pain. Bulk uploading allows you to upload an entire class worth of essays at a single time. You can work on other important tasks, come back in a few minutes to see all the essays perfectly graded.

Custom rubrics

We don't assume how you want to grade your essays. Instead, we provide you with the ability to create the same rubrics you already use. Those rubrics are then used to grade essays with the same grading criteria you are already accustomed to.

Sometimes you don't want to read a 5000 word essay and you'd just like a quick summary. Or maybe you're a student that needs to provide a summary of your essay to your teacher. We can help with our summarizer feature. We can provide a concise summary including the most important information and unique phrases.

AI detector

Our AI detector feature allows teachers to identify if an essay was written by AI or if only parts of it were written by AI. AI is becoming very popular and teachers need to be able to detect if essays are being written by students or AI.

Create classes to neatly organize your students essays. This is an essential feature when you have multiple classes and need to be able to track down students essays quickly.

Our mission

At EssayGrader, our mission is crystal clear: we're transforming the grading experience for teachers and students alike. Picture a space where teachers can efficiently and accurately grade essays, lightening their workload, while empowering students to enhance their writing skills.

Our software is a dynamic work in progress, a testament to our commitment to constant improvement. We're dedicated to refining and enhancing our platform continually. With each update, we strive to simplify the lives of both educators and learners, making the process of grading and writing essays smoother and more efficient.

We recognize the immense challenges teachers face – the heavy burdens, the long hours, and the often underappreciated efforts. EssayGrader is our way of shouldering some of that load. We are here to support you, to make your tasks more manageable, and to give you the tools you need to excel in your teaching journey.

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How to Get ChatGPT to Write an Essay: Prompts, Outlines, & More

Last Updated: March 31, 2024 Fact Checked

Getting ChatGPT to Write the Essay

Using ai to help you write, expert interview.

This article was written by Bryce Warwick, JD and by wikiHow staff writer, Nicole Levine, MFA . Bryce Warwick is currently the President of Warwick Strategies, an organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area offering premium, personalized private tutoring for the GMAT, LSAT and GRE. Bryce has a JD from the George Washington University Law School. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 45,115 times.

Are you curious about using ChatGPT to write an essay? While most instructors have tools that make it easy to detect AI-written essays, there are ways you can use OpenAI's ChatGPT to write papers without worrying about plagiarism or getting caught. In addition to writing essays for you, ChatGPT can also help you come up with topics, write outlines, find sources, check your grammar, and even format your citations. This wikiHow article will teach you the best ways to use ChatGPT to write essays, including helpful example prompts that will generate impressive papers.

Things You Should Know

• To have ChatGPT write an essay, tell it your topic, word count, type of essay, and facts or viewpoints to include.
• ChatGPT is also useful for generating essay topics, writing outlines, and checking grammar.
• Because ChatGPT can make mistakes and trigger AI-detection alarms, it's better to use AI to assist with writing than have it do the writing.

• Before using the OpenAI's ChatGPT to write your essay, make sure you understand your instructor's policies on AI tools. Using ChatGPT may be against the rules, and it's easy for instructors to detect AI-written essays.
• While you can use ChatGPT to write a polished-looking essay, there are drawbacks. Most importantly, ChatGPT cannot verify facts or provide references. This means that essays created by ChatGPT may contain made-up facts and biased content. [1] X Research source It's best to use ChatGPT for inspiration and examples instead of having it write the essay for you.

• The topic you want to write about.
• Essay length, such as word or page count. Whether you're writing an essay for a class, college application, or even a cover letter , you'll want to tell ChatGPT how much to write.
• Other assignment details, such as type of essay (e.g., personal, book report, etc.) and points to mention.
• If you're writing an argumentative or persuasive essay , know the stance you want to take so ChatGPT can argue your point.
• If you have notes on the topic that you want to include, you can also provide those to ChatGPT.
• When you plan an essay, think of a thesis, a topic sentence, a body paragraph, and the examples you expect to present in each paragraph.
• It can be like an outline and not an extensive sentence-by-sentence structure. It should be a good overview of how the points relate.

• "Write a 2000-word college essay that covers different approaches to gun violence prevention in the United States. Include facts about gun laws and give ideas on how to improve them."
• This prompt not only tells ChatGPT the topic, length, and grade level, but also that the essay is personal. ChatGPT will write the essay in the first-person point of view.
• "Write a 4-page college application essay about an obstacle I have overcome. I am applying to the Geography program and want to be a cartographer. The obstacle is that I have dyslexia. Explain that I have always loved maps, and that having dyslexia makes me better at making them."

• In our essay about gun control, ChatGPT did not mention school shootings. If we want to discuss this topic in the essay, we can use the prompt, "Discuss school shootings in the essay."
• Let's say we review our college entrance essay and realize that we forgot to mention that we grew up without parents. Add to the essay by saying, "Mention that my parents died when I was young."
• In the Israel-Palestine essay, ChatGPT explored two options for peace: A 2-state solution and a bi-state solution. If you'd rather the essay focus on a single option, ask ChatGPT to remove one. For example, "Change my essay so that it focuses on a bi-state solution."

• "Give me ideas for an essay about the Israel-Palestine conflict."
• "Ideas for a persuasive essay about a current event."
• "Give me a list of argumentative essay topics about COVID-19 for a Political Science 101 class."

• "Create an outline for an argumentative essay called "The Impact of COVID-19 on the Economy."
• "Write an outline for an essay about positive uses of AI chatbots in schools."
• "Create an outline for a short 2-page essay on disinformation in the 2016 election."

• "Find peer-reviewed sources for advances in using MRNA vaccines for cancer."
• "Give me a list of sources from academic journals about Black feminism in the movie Black Panther."
• "Give me sources for an essay on current efforts to ban children's books in US libraries."

• "Write a 4-page college paper about how global warming is changing the automotive industry in the United States."
• "Write a 750-word personal college entrance essay about how my experience with homelessness as a child has made me more resilient."
• You can even refer to the outline you created with ChatGPT, as the AI bot can reference up to 3000 words from the current conversation. [3] X Research source For example: "Write a 1000 word argumentative essay called 'The Impact of COVID-19 on the United States Economy' using the outline you provided. Argue that the government should take more action to support businesses affected by the pandemic."

• One way to do this is to paste a list of the sources you've used, including URLs, book titles, authors, pages, publishers, and other details, into ChatGPT along with the instruction "Create an MLA Works Cited page for these sources."
• You can also ask ChatGPT to provide a list of sources, and then build a Works Cited or References page that includes those sources. You can then replace sources you didn't use with the sources you did use.

Expert Q&A

• Because it's easy for teachers, hiring managers, and college admissions offices to spot AI-written essays, it's best to use your ChatGPT-written essay as a guide to write your own essay. Using the structure and ideas from ChatGPT, write an essay in the same format, but using your own words. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Always double-check the facts in your essay, and make sure facts are backed up with legitimate sources. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• If you see an error that says ChatGPT is at capacity , wait a few moments and try again. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

• Using ChatGPT to write or assist with your essay may be against your instructor's rules. Make sure you understand the consequences of using ChatGPT to write or assist with your essay. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• ChatGPT-written essays may include factual inaccuracies, outdated information, and inadequate detail. [4] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

Thanks for reading our article! If you’d like to learn more about completing school assignments, check out our in-depth interview with Bryce Warwick, JD .

• ↑ https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6783457-what-is-chatgpt
• ↑ https://platform.openai.com/examples/default-essay-outline
• ↑ https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6787051-does-chatgpt-remember-what-happened-earlier-in-the-conversation
• ↑ https://www.ipl.org/div/chatgpt/

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AI bot ChatGPT stuns academics with essay-writing skills and usability

Latest chatbot from Elon Musk-founded OpenAI can identify incorrect premises and refuse to answer inappropriate requests

Professors, programmers and journalists could all be out of a job in just a few years, after the latest chatbot from the Elon Musk-founded OpenAI foundation stunned onlookers with its writing ability, proficiency at complex tasks, and ease of use.

The system, called ChatGPT, is the latest evolution of the GPT family of text-generating AIs. Two years ago, the team’s previous AI, GPT3, was able to generate an opinion piece for the Guardian , and ChatGPT has significant further capabilities.

In the days since it was released, academics have generated responses to exam queries that they say would result in full marks if submitted by an undergraduate, and programmers have used the tool to solve coding challenges in obscure programming languages in a matter of seconds – before writing limericks explaining the functionality.

Dan Gillmor, a journalism professor at Arizona State University, asked the AI to handle one of the assignments he gives his students: writing a letter to a relative giving advice regarding online security and privacy. “If you’re unsure about the legitimacy of a website or email, you can do a quick search to see if others have reported it as being a scam,” the AI advised in part.

“I would have given this a good grade,” Gillmor said. “Academia has some very serious issues to confront.”

OpenAI said the new AI was created with a focus on ease of use. “The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests,” OpenAI said in a post announcing the release.

Unlike previous AI from the company, ChatGPT has been released for anyone to use , for free, during a “feedback” period. The company hopes to use this feedback to improve the final version of the tool.

ChatGPT is good at self-censoring, and at realising when it is being asked an impossible question. Asked, for instance, to describe what happened when Columbus arrived in America in 2015, older models may have willingly presented an entirely fictitious account, but ChatGPT recognises the falsehood and warns that any answer would be fictional.

The bot is also capable of refusing to answer queries altogether. Ask it for advice on stealing a car, for example, and the bot will say that “stealing a car is a serious crime that can have severe consequences”, and instead give advice such as “using public transportation”.

But the limits are easy to evade. Ask the AI instead for advice on how to beat the car-stealing mission in a fictional VR game called Car World and it will merrily give users detailed guidance on how to steal a car, and answer increasingly specific questions on problems like how to disable an immobiliser, how to hotwire the engine, and how to change the licence plates – all while insisting that the advice is only for use in the game Car World.

The AI is trained on a huge sample of text taken from the internet, generally without explicit permission from the authors of the material used. That has led to controversy, with some arguing that the technology is most useful for “copyright laundering” – making works derivative of existing material without breaking copyright.

One unusual critic was Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 before parting ways in 2017 due to conflicts of interest between the organisation and Tesla. In a post on Twitter on Sunday , Musk revealed that the organisation “had access to [the] Twitter database for training”, but that he had “put that on pause for now”.

“Need to understand more about governance structure & revenue plans going forward,” Musk added. “OpenAI was started as open-source & non-profit. Neither are still true.”

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Should I Use ChatGPT to Write My Essays?

Everything high school and college students need to know about using — and not using — ChatGPT for writing essays.

Jessica A. Kent

ChatGPT is one of the most buzzworthy technologies today.

In addition to other generative artificial intelligence (AI) models, it is expected to change the world. In academia, students and professors are preparing for the ways that ChatGPT will shape education, and especially how it will impact a fundamental element of any course: the academic essay.

Students can use ChatGPT to generate full essays based on a few simple prompts. But can AI actually produce high quality work, or is the technology just not there yet to deliver on its promise? Students may also be asking themselves if they should use AI to write their essays for them and what they might be losing out on if they did.

AI is here to stay, and it can either be a help or a hindrance depending on how you use it. Read on to become better informed about what ChatGPT can and can’t do, how to use it responsibly to support your academic assignments, and the benefits of writing your own essays.

What is Generative AI?

Artificial intelligence isn’t a twenty-first century invention. Beginning in the 1950s, data scientists started programming computers to solve problems and understand spoken language. AI’s capabilities grew as computer speeds increased and today we use AI for data analysis, finding patterns, and providing insights on the data it collects.

But why the sudden popularity in recent applications like ChatGPT? This new generation of AI goes further than just data analysis. Instead, generative AI creates new content. It does this by analyzing large amounts of data — GPT-3 was trained on 45 terabytes of data, or a quarter of the Library of Congress — and then generating new content based on the patterns it sees in the original data.

It’s like the predictive text feature on your phone; as you start typing a new message, predictive text makes suggestions of what should come next based on data from past conversations. Similarly, ChatGPT creates new text based on past data. With the right prompts, ChatGPT can write marketing content, code, business forecasts, and even entire academic essays on any subject within seconds.

But is generative AI as revolutionary as people think it is, or is it lacking in real intelligence?

The Drawbacks of Generative AI

It seems simple. You’ve been assigned an essay to write for class. You go to ChatGPT and ask it to write a five-paragraph academic essay on the topic you’ve been assigned. You wait a few seconds and it generates the essay for you!

But ChatGPT is still in its early stages of development, and that essay is likely not as accurate or well-written as you’d expect it to be. Be aware of the drawbacks of having ChatGPT complete your assignments.

It’s not intelligence, it’s statistics

One of the misconceptions about AI is that it has a degree of human intelligence. However, its intelligence is actually statistical analysis, as it can only generate “original” content based on the patterns it sees in already existing data and work.

It “hallucinates”

Generative AI models often provide false information — so much so that there’s a term for it: “AI hallucination.” OpenAI even has a warning on its home screen , saying that “ChatGPT may produce inaccurate information about people, places, or facts.” This may be due to gaps in its data, or because it lacks the ability to verify what it’s generating. 

It doesn’t do research  

If you ask ChatGPT to find and cite sources for you, it will do so, but they could be inaccurate or even made up.

This is because AI doesn’t know how to look for relevant research that can be applied to your thesis. Instead, it generates content based on past content, so if a number of papers cite certain sources, it will generate new content that sounds like it’s a credible source — except it likely may not be.

There are data privacy concerns

When you input your data into a public generative AI model like ChatGPT, where does that data go and who has access to it? 

Prompting ChatGPT with original research should be a cause for concern — especially if you’re inputting study participants’ personal information into the third-party, public application. 

JPMorgan has restricted use of ChatGPT due to privacy concerns, Italy temporarily blocked ChatGPT in March 2023 after a data breach, and Security Intelligence advises that “if [a user’s] notes include sensitive data … it enters the chatbot library. The user no longer has control over the information.”

It is important to be aware of these issues and take steps to ensure that you’re using the technology responsibly and ethically. 

It skirts the plagiarism issue

AI creates content by drawing on a large library of information that’s already been created, but is it plagiarizing? Could there be instances where ChatGPT “borrows” from previous work and places it into your work without citing it? Schools and universities today are wrestling with this question of what’s plagiarism and what’s not when it comes to AI-generated work.

To demonstrate this, one Elon University professor gave his class an assignment: Ask ChatGPT to write an essay for you, and then grade it yourself. 

“Many students expressed shock and dismay upon learning the AI could fabricate bogus information,” he writes, adding that he expected some essays to contain errors, but all of them did. 

His students were disappointed that “major tech companies had pushed out AI technology without ensuring that the general population understands its drawbacks” and were concerned about how many embraced such a flawed tool.

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How to Use AI as a Tool to Support Your Work

As more students are discovering, generative AI models like ChatGPT just aren’t as advanced or intelligent as they may believe. While AI may be a poor option for writing your essay, it can be a great tool to support your work.

Generate ideas for essays

Have ChatGPT help you come up with ideas for essays. For example, input specific prompts, such as, “Please give me five ideas for essays I can write on topics related to WWII,” or “Please give me five ideas for essays I can write comparing characters in twentieth century novels.” Then, use what it provides as a starting point for your original research.

Generate outlines

You can also use ChatGPT to help you create an outline for an essay. Ask it, “Can you create an outline for a five paragraph essay based on the following topic” and it will create an outline with an introduction, body paragraphs, conclusion, and a suggested thesis statement. Then, you can expand upon the outline with your own research and original thought.

Generate titles for your essays

Titles should draw a reader into your essay, yet they’re often hard to get right. Have ChatGPT help you by prompting it with, “Can you suggest five titles that would be good for a college essay about [topic]?”

The Benefits of Writing Your Essays Yourself

Asking a robot to write your essays for you may seem like an easy way to get ahead in your studies or save some time on assignments. But, outsourcing your work to ChatGPT can negatively impact not just your grades, but your ability to communicate and think critically as well. It’s always the best approach to write your essays yourself.

Create your own ideas

Writing an essay yourself means that you’re developing your own thoughts, opinions, and questions about the subject matter, then testing, proving, and defending those thoughts. 

When you complete school and start your career, projects aren’t simply about getting a good grade or checking a box, but can instead affect the company you’re working for — or even impact society. Being able to think for yourself is necessary to create change and not just cross work off your to-do list.

Building a foundation of original thinking and ideas now will help you carve your unique career path in the future.

Develop your critical thinking and analysis skills

In order to test or examine your opinions or questions about a subject matter, you need to analyze a problem or text, and then use your critical thinking skills to determine the argument you want to make to support your thesis. Critical thinking and analysis skills aren’t just necessary in school — they’re skills you’ll apply throughout your career and your life.

Improve your research skills

Writing your own essays will train you in how to conduct research, including where to find sources, how to determine if they’re credible, and their relevance in supporting or refuting your argument. Knowing how to do research is another key skill required throughout a wide variety of professional fields.

Learn to be a great communicator

Writing an essay involves communicating an idea clearly to your audience, structuring an argument that a reader can follow, and making a conclusion that challenges them to think differently about a subject. Effective and clear communication is necessary in every industry.

Be impacted by what you’re learning about : 

Engaging with the topic, conducting your own research, and developing original arguments allows you to really learn about a subject you may not have encountered before. Maybe a simple essay assignment around a work of literature, historical time period, or scientific study will spark a passion that can lead you to a new major or career.

Resources to Improve Your Essay Writing Skills

While there are many rewards to writing your essays yourself, the act of writing an essay can still be challenging, and the process may come easier for some students than others. But essay writing is a skill that you can hone, and students at Harvard Summer School have access to a number of on-campus and online resources to assist them.

Students can start with the Harvard Summer School Writing Center , where writing tutors can offer you help and guidance on any writing assignment in one-on-one meetings. Tutors can help you strengthen your argument, clarify your ideas, improve the essay’s structure, and lead you through revisions. 

The Harvard libraries are a great place to conduct your research, and its librarians can help you define your essay topic, plan and execute a research strategy, and locate sources. 

Finally, review the “ The Harvard Guide to Using Sources ,” which can guide you on what to cite in your essay and how to do it. Be sure to review the “Tips For Avoiding Plagiarism” on the “ Resources to Support Academic Integrity ” webpage as well to help ensure your success.

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The Future of AI in the Classroom

ChatGPT and other generative AI models are here to stay, so it’s worthwhile to learn how you can leverage the technology responsibly and wisely so that it can be a tool to support your academic pursuits. However, nothing can replace the experience and achievement gained from communicating your own ideas and research in your own academic essays.

About the Author

Jessica A. Kent is a freelance writer based in Boston, Mass. and a Harvard Extension School alum. Her digital marketing content has been featured on Fast Company, Forbes, Nasdaq, and other industry websites; her essays and short stories have been featured in North American Review, Emerson Review, Writer’s Bone, and others.

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Introducing Khanmigo’s New Academic Essay Feedback Tool

posted on November 29, 2023

By Sarah Robertson , senior product manager at Khan Academy

Khan Academy has always been about leveraging technology to deliver world-class educational experiences to students everywhere. We think the newest AI-powered feature in our Khanmigo pilot—our Academic Essay Feedback tool—is a groundbreaking step toward revolutionizing how students improve their writing skills.

The reality of writing instruction

Here’s a word problem for you: A ninth-grade English teacher assigns a two-page essay to 100 students. If she limits herself to spending 10 minutes per essay providing personalized, detailed feedback on each draft, how many hours will it take her to finish reviewing all 100 essays?

The answer is that it would take her nearly 17 hours —and that’s just for the first draft!

Research tells us that the most effective methods of improving student writing skills require feedback to be focused, actionable, aligned to clear objectives, and delivered often and in a timely manner . 

The unfortunate reality is that teachers are unable to provide this level of feedback to students as often as students need it—and they need it now more than ever. Only 25% of eighth and twelfth graders are proficient in writing, according to the most recent NAEP scores .

An AI writing tutor for every student

Developed by experts in English Language Arts (ELA) and writing instruction, the pilot Khanmigo Academic Essay Feedback tool uses AI to offer students specific, immediate, and actionable feedback on their argumentative, expository, or literary analysis essays. 

Unlike other AI-powered writing tools, the Academic Essay Feedback tool isn’t limited to giving feedback on sentence- or language-level issues alone, like grammar or spelling. Instead, it provides feedback on areas like essay structure and organization, how well students support their arguments, introduction and conclusion, and style and tone.

The tool also doesn’t just stop at providing feedback, it also guides students through the revision process. Students can view highlighted feedback, ask clarifying questions, see exemplar writing, make revisions, and ask for further review—without the AI doing any actual writing for them.

Unique features of Khanmigo pilot Academic Essay Feedback tool

• Immediate, personalized feedback: within seconds, students get detailed, actionable, grade-level-appropriate feedback (both praise and constructive) that is personalized to their specific writing assignment and tied directly to interactive highlights in their essay.
• Comprehensive approach: feedback covers a wide range of writing skills, from crafting an engaging yet focused introduction and thesis, to overall essay structure and organization, to style and tone, to alignment and use of evidence.
• Interactive revision process: students can interact with Khanmigo to ask questions about specific pieces of feedback, get examples of model writing, make immediate revisions based on the feedback, and see if their revisions addressed the suggestion.
• Support for various essay types: the tool is versatile and assists with multi-paragraph persuasive, argumentative, explanatory, and literary analysis essay assignments for grades 8-12 (and more, coming soon).
• Focus on instruction and growth: like all Khanmigo features, the Academic Essay Feedback tool will not do the work for the student. Teachers and parents can rest assured that Khanmigo is there to improve the students’ independent writing skills, not provide one-click suggested revisions.

How parents can use Khanmigo’s Academic Essay Feedback tool

Any student with Khanmigo access can find the feedback tool under the “Write” category on their AI Activities menu. 

For academic essays, students should simply paste their first draft into the essay field, select their grade level and essay type, and provide the essay instructions from the teacher.

Students then click “Submit” and feedback begins generating. Once Khanmigo is done generating feedback, students can work their way through the suggestions for each category, chat with Khanmigo for help, make revisions, and resolve feedback. They can then submit their second draft for another round of feedback, or copy the final draft to submit to their teacher.

Bringing Khanmigo to your classroom, school, or district

Teachers in Khan Academy Districts partnerships can begin using the Khanmigo Academic Essay Feedback tool with their students right away. Simply direct students to the feedback tool under the “Write” category on their AI Activities menu.

Like all other Khanmigo activities, students’ interactions are monitored and moderated for safety. Teachers or parents can view the student’s initial draft, AI-generated feedback, chat history, and final draft in the student’s chat history. If anything is flagged for moderation, teachers or parents will receive an email notification.

Looking ahead

With the Academic Essay Feedback tool in our Khanmigo pilot, teachers and parents can empower students to take charge of their writing.The tool helps facilitate a deeper understanding of effective writing techniques and encourages self-improvement. For teachers, we think this tool is a valuable ally, enabling them to provide more frequent, timely, detailed, and actionable feedback for students on multiple drafts.

In the coming months, we’ll be launching exciting improvements to the tool and even more writing resources for learners, parents, teachers, and administrators:

• The ability for teachers to create an essay-revision assignment for their students on Khan Academy
• More varied feedback areas and flexibility in what feedback is given
• Support for students in essay outlining and drafting
• Insights for teachers and parents into their students’ full writing process

Stay tuned!

Sarah Robertson is a senior product manager at Khan Academy. She has a M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction and over a decade of experience teaching English, developing curriculum, and creating software products that have helped tens of millions of students improve their reading and writing skills.

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• Teaching & Learning

Could ChatGPT mark your students’ essays?

Can artificial intelligence systems mark more accurately than humans? Definitely, and they have been able to do so since the 1960s.

In 1968 Dr Ellis Batten Page developed Project Essay Grade (PEG), an automated essay-marking system. PEG was very reliable . If you gave it the same essay on two different days, it awarded it the same mark, which is definitely not always the case with human markers. Not only that but its marks did tend to correlate quite closely with those of human markers. If you took the average marks awarded by a group of human markers and compared them with PEG, PEG agreed with the average more than any individual human marker. So you could argue that it was more reliable than any individual human.

So why haven’t we all been using AI marking systems ever since? It’s not because they are unreliable. It’s because of the impact they have on teaching and learning. Once students know that AI is marking their essays, they want to know what it rewards and how it rewards it. Many early AI systems rewarded the length of an essay, simply because essay length does tend to correlate with essay quality. But, of course, correlation is not causation. Once people know the AI is rewarding length, they can start to game the system. In 2001  a group of researchers found that repeating the same paragraph 37 times was sufficient to fool one popular automated essay marker.

This, essentially, is the problem with AI marking. It’s easy for it to be more consistent than humans, because humans are not great at being consistent. But while humans might not be consistent, they can’t be fooled by tricks like writing the same paragraph 37 times. In a way, the justification for human marking is a bit like the justification for a jury system. It may well be inconsistent and unwieldy and error-prone, but it will have a backbone of common sense that prevents really egregious and absurd decisions.

• Could an AI bot be writing students’ homework?
• Is this the future of assessment?
• Will artificial intelligence be a force for good in education?

And this, for me, has always been the challenge of AI marking. It’s not about how well it does the job to begin with. It’s about how students respond when they know their work is being marked by AI, and how the AI then responds to that.

1968 and 2001 are the distant past in the world of AI. ChatGPT is orders of magnitude more sophisticated than older AI models. So how does it cope with deliberate attempts to game it? It depends…

Putting artificial intelligence marking to the test

ChatGPT fail

I took a good essay on Romeo and Juliet and asked ChatGPT to mark it out of four levels. It gave it a top grade and a nice comment. So far, so good.

I then took the Romeo and Juliet essay and replaced all the mentions of Romeo with “Pip”, all the mentions of the Nurse with “Magwitch”, and all the mentions of Romeo and Juliet  with Great Expectations . This resulted in some entertaining paragraphs like:

I then pasted this essay into ChatGPT and said it was an essay on the first chapter of Great Expectations , and to mark it out of four levels. It gave it top marks and a nice comment.

So is it case closed? Is this just another easily gameable AI system? Not quite.

While it is relatively straightforward to game ChatGPT for literature essays, it is much harder to game it for pure writing assessments.

ChatGPT success

I took a model essay on why we should ban cigarettes, and asked it to mark it out of eight levels. It gave it a top grade and a nice comment. As with the literature essay, it was so far, so good.

But that was before I took the banning cigarettes model essay and replaced all the mentions of “cigarette” and “smoke” with “mobile phones”.

This resulted in some entertaining sentences like this:

I then pasted this essay into ChatGPT and said it was an essay on why we should ban mobile phones.

ChatGPT was wise to this.

This makes sense, given what we know about ChatGPT’s strengths. It has been developed as a language model, and it is phenomenally good at understanding and producing natural language. However, it does make factual errors, particularly about complex content.

So what are the implications of all this? Is ChatGPT good enough to be used for writing assessments, given it is hard to game?

I still think we have to be cautious.

So far, a lot of the debate about the negative effects of ChatGPT has focused on the way students might use it to cheat by creating essays. You can solve this problem by having students complete their writing in controlled conditions.

But if those essays are being marked by AI, students may end up revising for those exams by trying to memorise hacks and hints that will fool the AI. Even if the AI is not gameable, students may still end up wasting time thinking they can crack the code.

Indeed, the students might be right to think they could game the system because even the ChatGPT’s creators don’t actually know how the AI is making its decisions. So it is always possible there is some loophole no one has yet discovered. Something like this has happened with AI facial recognition systems . 

Fears of this kind are one of the reasons for the general unease about the idea of AI marking for public exams.

However, what if the AI could be supervised by a human who could stop it from doing anything obviously absurd? There is a precedent for this in other complex systems. For example, a lot of planes have very sophisticated autopilots, but we still need a human pilot on board. 

This is perhaps the model that we need to work towards. For now, though, it’s clear that ChatGPT won’t be taking over for English teachers any time soon.

Daisy Christodoulou is director of education at No More Marking, a provider of online comparative judgement software for schools

This is an edited version of an article first published on The No More Marking Blog

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• CAREER COLUMN
• 08 April 2024

Three ways ChatGPT helps me in my academic writing

• Dritjon Gruda 0

Dritjon Gruda is an invited associate professor of organizational behavior at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Lisbon, the Católica Porto Business School and the Research Centre in Management and Economics.

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For Dritjon Gruda, artificial-intelligence chatbots have been a huge help in scientific writing and peer review. Credit: Vladimira Stavreva-Gruda

Confession time: I use generative artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the debate over whether chatbots are positive or negative forces in academia, I use these tools almost daily to refine the phrasing in papers that I’ve written, and to seek an alternative assessment of work I’ve been asked to evaluate, as either a reviewer or an editor. AI even helped me to refine this article.

I study personality and leadership at Católica Porto Business School in Portugal and am an associate editor at Personality and Individual Differences and Psychology of Leaders and Leadership. The value that I derive from generative AI is not from the technology itself blindly churning out text, but from engaging with the tool and using my own expertise to refine what it produces. The dialogue between me and the chatbot both enhances the coherence of my work and, over time, teaches me how to describe complex topics in a simpler way.

Whether you’re using AI in writing, editing or peer review, here’s how it can do the same for you.

Polishing academic writing

Ever heard the property mantra, ‘location, location, location’? In the world of generative AI, it’s ‘context, context, context’.

Context is king. You can’t expect generative AI — or anything or anyone, for that matter — to provide a meaningful response to a question without it. When you’re using a chatbot to refine a section of your paper for clarity, start by outlining the context. What is your paper about, and what is your main argument? Jot down your ideas in any format — even bullet points will work. Then, present this information to the generative AI of your choice. I typically use ChatGPT, made by OpenAI in San Francisco, California, but for tasks that demand a deep understanding of language nuances, such as analysing search queries or text, I find Gemini, developed by researchers at Google, to be particularly effective. The open-source large language models made by Mixtral, based in Paris, are ideal when you’re working offline but still need assistance from a chatbot.

Regardless of which generative-AI tool you choose, the key to success lies in providing precise instructions. The clearer you are, the better. For example, you might write: “I’m writing a paper on [topic] for a leading [discipline] academic journal. What I tried to say in the following section is [specific point]. Please rephrase it for clarity, coherence and conciseness, ensuring each paragraph flows into the next. Remove jargon. Use a professional tone.” You can use the same technique again later on, to clarify your responses to reviewer comments.

Remember, the chatbot’s first reply might not be perfect — it’s a collaborative and iterative process. You might need to refine your instructions or add more information, much as you would when discussing a concept with a colleague. It’s the interaction that improves the results. If something doesn’t quite hit the mark, don’t hesitate to say, “This isn’t quite what I meant. Let’s adjust this part.” Or you can commend its improvements: “This is much clearer, but let’s tweak the ending for a stronger transition to the next section.”

This approach can transform a challenging task into a manageable one, filling the page with insights you might not have fully gleaned on your own. It’s like having a conversation that opens new perspectives, making generative AI a collaborative partner in the creative process of developing and refining ideas. But importantly, you are using the AI as a sounding board: it is not writing your document for you; nor is it reviewing manuscripts.

Elevating peer review

Generative AI can be a valuable tool in the peer-review process. After thoroughly reading a manuscript, summarize key points and areas for review. Then, use the AI to help organize and articulate your feedback (without directly inputting or uploading the manuscript’s text, thus avoiding privacy concerns). For example, you might instruct the AI: “Assume you’re an expert and seasoned scholar with 20+ years of academic experience in [field]. On the basis of my summary of a paper in [field], where the main focus is on [general topic], provide a detailed review of this paper, in the following order: 1) briefly discuss its core content; 2) identify its limitations; and 3) explain the significance of each limitation in order of importance. Maintain a concise and professional tone throughout.”

I’ve found that AI partnerships can be incredibly enriching; the tools often offer perspectives I hadn’t considered. For instance, ChatGPT excels at explaining and justifying the reasons behind specific limitations that I had identified in my review, which helps me to grasp the broader implications of the study’s contribution. If I identify methodological limitations, ChatGPT can elaborate on these in detail and suggest ways to overcome them in a revision. This feedback often helps me to connect the dots between the limitations and their collective impact on the paper’s overall contribution. Occasionally, however, its suggestions are off-base, far-fetched, irrelevant or simply wrong. And that is why the final responsibility for the review always remains with you. A reviewer must be able to distinguish between what is factual and what is not, and no chatbot can reliably do that.

Optimizing editorial feedback

The final area in which I benefit from using chatbots is in my role as a journal editor. Providing constructive editorial feedback to authors can be challenging, especially when you oversee several manuscripts every week. Having personally received countless pieces of unhelpful, non-specific feedback — such as, “After careful consideration, we have decided not to proceed with your manuscript” — I recognize the importance of clear and constructive communication. ChatGPT has become indispensable in this process, helping me to craft precise, empathetic and actionable feedback without replacing human editorial decisions.

For instance, after evaluating a paper and noting its pros and cons, I might feed these into ChatGPT and get it to draft a suitable letter: “On the basis of these notes, draft a letter to the author. Highlight the manuscript’s key issues and clearly explain why the manuscript, despite its interesting topic, might not provide a substantial enough advancement to merit publication. Avoid jargon. Be direct. Maintain a professional and respectful tone throughout.” Again, it might take a few iterations to get the tone and content just right.

I’ve found that this approach both enhances the quality of my feedback and helps to guarantee that I convey my thoughts supportively. The result is a more positive and productive dialogue between editors and authors.

There is no doubt that generative AI presents challenges to the scientific community. But it can also enhance the quality of our work. These tools can bolster our capabilities in writing, reviewing and editing. They preserve the essence of scientific inquiry — curiosity, critical thinking and innovation — while improving how we communicate our research.

Considering the benefits, what are you waiting for?

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01042-3

This is an article from the Nature Careers Community, a place for Nature readers to share their professional experiences and advice. Guest posts are encouraged .

Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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How to Use ChatGPT to Write Essays That Impress

Step 1: Use ChatGPT to Find and Refine Essay Topics

• Log into the service and type the following prompt into ChatGPT:

• As you can see, ChatGPT gave several good ideas for our essay. If you want to refine the idea further, you can ask the chatbot to cut out some parts of the idea and replace them. Or, you can ask for more context in certain parts. Example – “Expand more on topic number 5 and what it means.”

Step 2: Ask ChatGPT to Construct an Outline

• With the same chat open, type out “ Give me an essay outline for <selected topic>. Make sure to keep it structured as I’ll use it to write my essay .” In this case, I will use topic number 2 since it aligns with what I had in mind.

• As you can see above, we now have a structured outline for our essay. We can use this to write our essay or have ChatGPT do that job. Nonetheless, it’s a good starting point. As always, you can have the AI chatbot cut out parts of the outline or specifically add new ones depending on your requirement.

Step 3: Get ChatGPT to Cite Sources for Your Essay

Even though we have the idea and the outline, we will need to do our research for proof supporting our essay. Thankfully, ChatGPT can be of some help here. Since the chatbot is adept at moderate research, users can get a general idea of where to look for gathering information. Let’s begin doing that.

• Let’s begin asking ChatGPT for sources. With the same chat open, type in the following prompt:

• Now we have a list of 10 sources we can reference from. However, you can also see that ChatGPT mentions the year 2021 in some of them. Therefore, it’s best to use these websites but navigate to the latest pages pertaining to your essay for research. This applies to every topic, so always do it. Also, chatbots like ChatGPT have a habit of hallucinating and making up information, so do be careful.

Step 4: Have ChatGPT Write the Essay

• In the same chat, type the following prompt – “With the topic and outline available to you, generate a 700-word essay. Make sure to keep it structured and concise yet informational. Also, keep in mind my target audience is <Insert target audience> so cater to that accordingly.”
• In the middle of the essay, ChatGPT might stop and not answer. Simply type “ Continue ,” and it will finish the rest of the essay.

Step 5: Edit the Essay with ChatGPT

No matter if you have used ChatGPT to draft a complete essay or have written one yourself, you can use this step to make ChatGPT your co-editor and grammar checker. While your essay might need an initial look from a human, you can definitely use the bot to hash out the tone and add little details.

• Either open up the same chat or have your essay already in the clipboard. With that done, type out the following prompt:

Step 6: Export the Essay for Submission

However, for those who want to export the essay into a more aesthetic format, we have just the thing for you. There is no shortage of best ChatGPT Chrome extensions on the internet right now. We have one such selection linked in our list that can export selective chats onto beautiful image formats if you want to show off your essay. Check it out and let us know how you liked it.

Bonus: ChatGPT and AI Apps to Write Essays

1. writesonic.

Ryter is another helpful AI writing assistant that not only helps with essays but all types of articles. The service is powered by a language model that gives it intelligence. Rytr comes with 40+ different use cases and 20+ writing tones for all types of written material. For those who don’t want to stick to English, it even comes with support for 30+ languages.

Upanishad Sharma

Combining his love for Literature and Tech, Upanishad dived into the world of technology journalism with fire. Now he writes about anything and everything while keeping a keen eye on his first love of gaming. Often found chronically walking around the office.

Im student i want to become financially independent woman in life so I want esay essay write

I am housewife and I want easy essay I want to change my life my husband was job less and I want to work online part time job plz help I am enter pass

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New bot ChatGPT will force colleges to get creative to prevent cheating, experts say

After its viral launch last week, the chatbot ChatGPT was lauded online by some as a dramatic step forward for artificial intelligence and the potential future of web search.

But with such praise also came concern regarding its potential usage in academic settings. Could the chatbot, which provides coherent, quirky and conversational responses to simple language inquiries, inspire more students to cheat?

Students have been able to cheat on assignments using the internet for decades, giving rise to tools meant to check if their work was original. But the fear now is that ChatGPT could render those resources obsolete.

Already, some people online have tested out whether it's possible to have the bot complete an assignment. "holyyyy, solved my computer networks assignment using chatGPT," one person, who later clarified the assignment was old, tweeted . Others suggested that its existence could result in the death of the college essay. One technologist went as far as saying that with ChatGPT, "College as we know it will cease to exist."

Artificial intelligence company OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT , did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding cheating concerns.

However, several experts who teach in the field of AI and humanities said the chatbot, while impressive, is not something they’re ready to sound the alarm about when it comes to possible widespread student cheating.

"We’re not there, but we’re also not that far away," said Andrew Piper, a professor of language, literatures and culture and a professor of AI and storytelling at McGill University. "We’re definitely not at the stage of like, out-of-the-box, it’ll write a bunch of student essays and no one will be able to tell the difference."

Piper and other experts who spoke with NBC News likened the fear around cheating and ChatGPT to concerns that arose when the calculator was invented, when people thought it would be the death of humans learning math.

Lauren Klein, an associate professor in the Departments of English and Quantitative Theory and Methods at Emory University, even compared the panic to the philosopher Plato’s fears that writing would dissolve human memory.

“There’s always been this concern that technologies will do away with what people do best, and the reality is that people have had to learn how to use these technologies to enhance what they do best,” Klein said.

There’s always been this concern that technologies will do away with what people do best, and the reality is that people have had to learn how to use these technologies to enhance what they do best.

— Lauren Klein, an associate professor at Emory University

Academic institutions will need to get creative and find ways to integrate new technologies like ChatGPT into their curriculum just like they did during the rise of the calculator, Piper noted.

In reality, AI tools like ChatGPT could actually be used to enhance education, according to Paul Fyfe, an associate professor of English at North Carolina State University.

He said there’s plenty of room for collaboration between AI and educators.

“It’s important to be talking about this right now and to bring students into the conversation," Fyfe said. "Rather than try to legislate from the get-go that this is strange and scary, therefore we need to shut it down."

And some teachers are already embracing AI programs in the classroom.

Piper, who runs .txtlab, a research laboratory for artificial intelligence and storytelling, said he’s had students analyze AI writing and found they can often tell which papers were written by a machine and which were written by a human.

As for educators who are concerned about the rise of AI, Fyfe and Piper said the technology is already used in many facets of education.

Computer-assisted writing tools, such as Grammarly or Google Doc’s Smart Compose, already exist — and have long been utilized by many students. Platforms like Grammarly and Chegg also offer plagiarism checker tools, so both students and teachers can assess if an essay has been, in part or in total, lifted from somewhere else. A spokesperson for Grammarly did not return a request for comment. A spokesperson for Chegg declined to comment.

Those who spoke with NBC News said they're not aware of any technology that detects if an AI wrote an essay, but they predict that someone will soon capitalize on building that technology.

As of right now, Piper said the best defense against AI essays is teachers getting to know their students and how they write in order to catch a discrepancy in the work they're turning in.

When an AI does reach the level of meeting all the requirements of academic assignments and if students use that technology to coast through college, Piper warned that could be a major detriment to students' education.

For now, he suggested an older technology to combat fears of students using ChatGPT to cheat.

"It will reinvigorate the love of pen and paper," he said.

Kalhan Rosenblatt is a reporter covering youth and internet culture for NBC News, based in New York.

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, can you use chatgpt for your college essay.

College Admissions , College Essays

ChatGPT has become a popular topic of conversation since its official launch in November 2022. The artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot can be used for all sorts of things, like having conversations, answering questions, and even crafting complete pieces of writing.

If you’re applying for college, you might be wondering about ChatGPT college admissions’ potential.  Should you use a ChatGPT college essay in your application ? 

By the time you finish reading this article, you’ll know much more about ChatGPT, including how students can use it responsibly and if it’s a good idea to use ChatGPT on college essays . We’ll answer all your questions, like:

• What is ChatGPT and why are schools talking about it?
• What are the good and bad aspects of ChatGPT?
• Should you use ChatGPT for college essays and applications?
• Can colleges detect ChatGPT?
• Are there other tools and strategies that students can use, instead?

We’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s get started!

Schools and colleges are worried about how new AI technology affects how students learn. (Don't worry. Robots aren't replacing your teachers...yet.)

What Is ChatGPT and Why Are Schools Talking About It?

ChatGPT (short for “Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer”) is a chatbot created by OpenAI , an artificial intelligence research company. ChatGPT can be used for various tasks, like having human-like conversations, answering questions, giving recommendations, translating words and phrases—and writing things like essays. 

In order to do this, ChatGPT uses a neural network that’s been trained on thousands of resources to predict relationships between words. When you give ChatGPT a task, it uses that knowledge base to interpret your input or query. It then analyzes its data banks to predict the combinations of words that will best answer your question. 

So while ChatGPT might seem like it’s thinking, it’s actually pulling information from hundreds of thousands of resources , then answering your questions by looking for patterns in that data and predicting which words come next.  

Why Schools Are Concerned About ChatGPT

Unsurprisingly, schools are worried about ChatGPT and its misuse, especially in terms of academic dishonesty and plagiarism . Most schools, including colleges, require students’ work to be 100% their own. That’s because taking someone else’s ideas and passing them off as your own is stealing someone else’s intellectual property and misrepresenting your skills. 

The problem with ChatGPT from schools’ perspective is that it does the writing and research for you, then gives you the final product. In other words, you’re not doing the work it takes to complete an assignment when you’re using ChatGPT , which falls under schools’ plagiarism and dishonesty policies.  

Colleges are also concerned with how ChatGPT will negatively affect students’ critical thinking, research, and writing skills . Essays and other writing assignments are used to measure students’ mastery of the material, and if students submit ChatGPT college essays, teachers will just be giving feedback on an AI’s writing…which doesn’t help the student learn and grow. 

Beyond that, knowing how to write well is an important skill people need to be successful throughout life. Schools believe that if students rely on ChatGPT to write their essays, they’re doing more than just plagiarizing—they’re impacting their ability to succeed in their future careers. 

Many Schools Have Already Banned ChatGPT

Schools have responded surprisingly quickly to AI use, including ChatGPT. Worries about academic dishonesty, plagiarism, and mis/disinformation have led many high schools and colleges to ban the use of ChatGPT . Some schools have begun using AI-detection software for assignment submissions, and some have gone so far as to block students from using ChatGPT on their internet networks. 

It’s likely that schools will begin revising their academic honesty and plagiarism policies to address the use of AI tools like ChatGPT. You’ll want to stay up-to-date with your schools’ policies. 

ChatGPT is pretty amazing...but it's not a great tool for writing college essays. Here's why.

ChatGPT: College Admissions and Entrance Essays

College admissions essays—also called personal statements—ask students to explore important events, experiences, and ideas from their lives. A great entrance essay will explain what makes you you !  

ChatGPT is a machine that doesn’t know and can’t understand your experiences. That means using ChatGPT to write your admissions essays isn’t just unethical. It actually puts you at a disadvantage because ChatGPT can’t adequately showcase what it means to be you. 

Let’s take a look at four ways ChatGPT negatively impacts college admissions essays.

#1: ChatGPT Lacks Insight

We recommend students use u nexpected or slightly unusual topics because they help admissions committees learn more about you and what makes you unique. The chat bot doesn’t know any of that, so nothing ChatGPT writes can’t accurately reflect your experience, passions, or goals for the future. 

Because ChatGPT will make guesses about who you are, it won’t be able to share what makes you unique in a way that resonates with readers. And since that’s what admissions counselors care about, a ChatGPT college essay could negatively impact an otherwise strong application.  

#2: ChatGPT Might Plagiarize 

Writing about experiences that many other people have had isn’t a very strong approach to take for entrance essays . After all, you don’t want to blend in—you want to stand out! 

If you write your essay yourself and include key details about your past experiences and future goals, there’s little risk that you’ll write the same essay as someone else. But if you use ChatGPT—who’s to say someone else won’t, too? Since ChatGPT uses predictive guesses to write essays, there’s a good chance the text it uses in your essay already appeared in someone else’s.  

Additionally, ChatGPT learns from every single interaction it has. So even if your essay isn’t plagiarized, it’s now in the system. That means the next person who uses ChatGPT to write their essay may end up with yours. You’ll still be on the hook for submitting a ChatGPT college essay, and someone else will be in trouble, too.

#3: ChatGPT Doesn’t Understand Emotion 

Keep in mind that ChatGPT can’t experience or imitate emotions, and so its writing samples lack, well, a human touch ! 

A great entrance essay will explore experiences or topics you’re genuinely excited about or proud of . This is your chance to show your chosen schools what you’ve accomplished and how you’ll continue growing and learning, and an essay without emotion would be odd considering that these should be real, lived experiences and passions you have!

#4: ChatGPT Produced Mediocre Results

If you’re still curious what would happen if you submitted a ChatGPT college essay with your application, you’re in luck. Both Business Insider and Forbes asked ChatGPT to write a couple of college entrance essays, and then they sent them to college admissions readers to get their thoughts. 

The readers agreed that the essays would probably pass as being written by real students—assuming admissions committees didn’t use AI detection software—but that they both were about what a “very mediocre, perhaps even a middle school, student would produce.” The admissions professionals agreed that the essays probably wouldn’t perform very well with entrance committees, especially at more selective schools.  

That’s not exactly the reaction you want when an admission committee reads your application materials! So, when it comes to ChatGPT college admissions, it’s best to steer clear and write your admission materials by yourself. 

Can Colleges Detect ChatGPT?

We’ve already explained why it’s not a great idea to use ChatGPT to write your college essays and applications , but you may still be wondering: can colleges detect ChatGPT? 

In short, yes, they can! 

Software Can Detect ChatGPT

As technology improves and increases the risk of academic dishonesty, plagiarism, and mis/disinformation, software that can detect such technology is improving, too. For instance, OpenAI, the same company that built ChatGPT, is working on a text classifier that can tell the difference between AI-written text and human-written text .  

Turnitin, one of the most popular plagiarism detectors used by high schools and universities, also recently developed the AI Innovation Lab —a detection software designed to flag submissions that have used AI tools like ChatGPT. Turnitin says that this tool works with 98% confidence in detecting AI writing. 

Plagiarism and AI companies aren’t the only ones interested in AI-detection software. A 22-year old computer science student at Princeton created an app to detect ChatGPT writing, called Zero GPT. This software works by measuring the complexity of ideas and variety of sentence structures.  

Human Readers Can Detect ChatGPT 

It’s also worth keeping in mind that teachers can spot the use of ChatGPT themselves , even if it isn’t confirmed by a software detector. For example, if you’ve turned in one or two essays to your teacher already, they’re probably familiar with your unique writing style. If you submit a college essay draft essay that uses totally different vocabulary, sentence structures, and figures of speech, your teacher will likely take note.

Additionally , admissions committees and readers may be able to spot ChatGPT writing, too. ChatGPT (and AI writing, in general) uses more simplistic sentence structures with less variation, so that could make it easier to tell if you’ve submitted a ChatGPT college essay. These professionals also read thousands of essays every year, which means they know what a typical essay reads like. You want your college essay to catch their attention…but not because you used AI software! 

If you use ChatGPT responsibly, you can be as happy as these kids.

Pros and Cons of ChatGPT: College Admissions Edition

ChatGPT is a brand new technology, which means we’re still learning about the ways it can benefit us. It’s important to think about the pros and the cons to any new tool …and that includes artificial intelligence!

Let’s look at some of the good—and not-so-good—aspects of ChatGPT below. 

ChatGPT: The Good

It may seem like we’re focused on just the negatives of using ChatGPT in this article, but we’re willing to admit that the chatbot isn’t all bad. In fact, it can be a very useful tool for learning if used responsibly !

Like we already mentioned, students shouldn’t use ChatGPT to write entire essays or assignments. They can use it, though, as a learning tool alongside their own critical thinking and writing skills.

Students can use ChatGPT responsibly to:

• Learn more about a topic . It’s a great place to get started for general knowledge and ideas about most subjects.
• Find reputable and relevant sources on a topic. Students can ask ChatGPT for names and information about leading scholars, relevant websites and databases, and more. 
• Brainstorm ideas for assignments. Students can share the ideas they already have with ChatGPT, and in return, the chatbot can suggest ideas for further exploration and even organization of their points.
• Check work (that they’ve written themselves!) for errors or cla rity. This is similar to how spell- and grammar-checking software is used. ChatGPT may be even better than some competitors for this, because students can actually ask ChatGPT to explain the errors and their solutions—not just to fix them. 

Before you use ChatGPT—even for the tasks mentioned above—you should talk to your teacher or school about their AI and academic dishonesty policies. It’s also a good idea to include an acknowledgement that you used ChatGPT with an explanation of its use. 

This guy made some bad decisions using ChatGPT. Don't be this guy.

ChatGPT: The Bad

The first model of ChatGPT (GPT-3.5) was formally introduced to the public in November 2022, and the newer model (GPT-4) in March 2023. So, it’s still very new and there’s a lot of room for improvement .  

There are many misconceptions about ChatGPT. One of the most extreme is that the AI is all-knowing and can make its own decisions. Another is that ChatGPT is a search engine that, when asked a question, can just surf the web for timely, relevant resources and give you all of that information. Both of these beliefs are incorrect because ChatGPT is limited to the information it’s been given by OpenAI . 

Remember how the ‘PT’ in ChatGPT stands for “Pre-trained”? That means that every time OpenAI gives ChatGPT an update, it’s given more information to work with (and so it has more information to share with you). In other words, it’s “trained” on information so it can give you the most accurate and relevant responses possible—but that information can be limited and biased . Ultimately, humans at OpenAI decide what pieces of information to share with ChatGPT, so it’s only as accurate and reliable as the sources it has access to.

For example, if you were to ask ChatGPT-3.5 what notable headlines made the news last week, it would respond that it doesn’t have access to that information because its most recent update was in September 2021!

You’re probably already familiar with how easy it can be to come across misinformation, misleading and untrue information on the internet. Since ChatGPT can’t tell the difference between what is true and what isn’t, it’s up to the humans at OpenAI to make sure only accurate and true information is given to the chatbot . This leaves room for human error , and users of ChatGPT have to keep that in mind when using and learning from the chatbot.

These are just the most obvious problems with ChatGPT. Some other problems with the chatbot include:

• A lack of common sense. ChatGPT can create seemingly sensical responses to many questions and topics, but it doesn’t have common sense or complete background knowledge.
• A lack of empathy. ChatGPT doesn’t have emotions, so it can’t understand them, either. 
• An inability to make decisions or problem solve . While the chatbot can complete basic tasks like answering questions or giving recommendations, it can’t solve complex tasks. 

While there are some great uses for ChatGPT, it’s certainly not without its flaws.

Our bootcamp can help you put together amazing college essays that help you get into your dream schools—no AI necessary.

What Other Tools and Strategies Can Help Students Besides ChatGPT?

While it’s not a good idea to use ChatGPT for college admissions materials, it’s not the only tool available to help students with college essays and assignments. 

One of the best strategies students can use to write good essays is to make sure they give themselves plenty of time for the assignment. The writing process includes much more than just drafting! Having time to brainstorm ideas, write out a draft, revise it for clarity and completeness, and polish it makes for a much stronger essay. 

Teachers are another great resource students can use, especially for college application essays. Asking a teacher (or two!) for feedback can really help students improve the focus, clarity, and correctness of an essay. It’s also a more interactive way to learn—being able to sit down with a teacher to talk about their feedback can be much more engaging than using other tools. 

Using expert resources during the essay writing process can make a big difference, too. Our article outlines a complete list of strategies for students writing college admission essays. It breaks down what the Common Application essay is, gives tips for choosing the best essay topic, offers strategies for staying focused and being specific, and more.  

You can also get help from people who know the college admissions process best, like former admissions counselors. PrepScholar’s Admissions Bootcamp guides you through the entire application process , and you’ll get insider tips and tricks from real-life admissions counselors that’ll make your applications stand out. Even better, our bootcamp includes step-by-step essay writing guidance , so you can get the help you need to make sure your essay is perfect.  

If you’re hoping for more technological help, Grammarly is another AI tool that can check writing for correctness. It can correct things like misused and misspelled words and grammar mistakes, and it can improve your tone and style. 

It’s also widely available across multiple platforms through a Windows desktop app, an Android and iOS app, and a Google Chrome extension. And since Grammarly just checks your writing without doing any of the work for you, it’s totally safe to use on your college essays. 

The Bottom Line: ChatGPT College Admissions and Essays

ChatGPT will continue to be a popular discussion topic as it continues evolving. You can expect your chosen schools to address ChatGPT and other AI tools in their academic honesty and plagiarism policies in the near future—and maybe even to restrict or ban the use of the chatbot for school admissions and assignments.

As AI continues transforming, so will AI-detection. The goal is to make sure that AI is used responsibly by students so that they’re avoiding plagiarism and building their research, writing, and critical thinking skills. There are some great uses for ChatGPT when used responsibly, but you should always check with your teachers and schools beforehand.

ChatGPT’s “bad” aspects still need improving, and that’s going to take some time.Be aware that the chatbot isn’t even close to perfect, and it needs to be fact-checked just like other sources of information.

Similarly to other school assignments, don’t submit a ChatGPT college essay for college applications, either. College entrance essays should outline unique and interesting personal experiences and ideas, and those can only come from you.  

Just because ChatGPT isn’t a good idea doesn’t mean there aren’t resources to help you put together a great college essay. There are many other tools and strategies you can use instead of ChatGPT , many of which have been around for longer and offer better feedback. 

What’s Next?

Ready to write your college essays the old-fashioned way? Start here with our comprehensive guide to the admissions essays. 

Most students have to submit essays as part of their Common Application . Here's a complete breakdown of the Common App prompts —and how to answer them. 

The most common type of essay answers the "why this college?" prompt. We've got an expert breakdown that shows you how to write a killer response , step by step. 

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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Students Are Likely Writing Millions of Papers With AI

Students have submitted more than 22 million papers that may have used generative AI in the past year, new data released by plagiarism detection company Turnitin shows.

A year ago, Turnitin rolled out an AI writing detection tool that was trained on its trove of papers written by students as well as other AI-generated texts. Since then, more than 200 million papers have been reviewed by the detector, predominantly written by high school and college students. Turnitin found that 11 percent may contain AI-written language in 20 percent of its content, with 3 percent of the total papers reviewed getting flagged for having 80 percent or more AI writing. (Turnitin is owned by Advance, which also owns Condé Nast, publisher of WIRED.) Turnitin says its detector has a false positive rate of less than 1 percent when analyzing full documents.

ChatGPT’s launch was met with knee-jerk fears that the English class essay would die . The chatbot can synthesize information and distill it near-instantly—but that doesn’t mean it always gets it right. Generative AI has been known to hallucinate , creating its own facts and citing academic references that don’t actually exist. Generative AI chatbots have also been caught spitting out biased text on gender and race . Despite those flaws, students have used chatbots for research, organizing ideas, and as a ghostwriter . Traces of chatbots have even been found in peer-reviewed, published academic writing .

Teachers understandably want to hold students accountable for using generative AI without permission or disclosure. But that requires a reliable way to prove AI was used in a given assignment. Instructors have tried at times to find their own solutions to detecting AI in writing, using messy, untested methods to enforce rules , and distressing students. Further complicating the issue, some teachers are even using generative AI in their grading processes.

Detecting the use of gen AI is tricky. It’s not as easy as flagging plagiarism, because generated text is still original text. Plus, there’s nuance to how students use gen AI; some may ask chatbots to write their papers for them in large chunks or in full, while others may use the tools as an aid or a brainstorm partner.

Students also aren't tempted by only ChatGPT and similar large language models. So-called word spinners are another type of AI software that rewrites text, and may make it less obvious to a teacher that work was plagiarized or generated by AI. Turnitin’s AI detector has also been updated to detect word spinners, says Annie Chechitelli, the company’s chief product officer. It can also flag work that was rewritten by services like spell checker Grammarly, which now has its own generative AI tool . As familiar software increasingly adds generative AI components, what students can and can’t use becomes more muddled.

Detection tools themselves have a risk of bias. English language learners may be more likely to set them off; a 2023 study found a 61.3 percent false positive rate when evaluating Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exams with seven different AI detectors. The study did not examine Turnitin’s version. The company says it has trained its detector on writing from English language learners as well as native English speakers. A study published in October found that Turnitin was among the most accurate of 16 AI language detectors in a test that had the tool examine undergraduate papers and AI-generated papers.

Julian Chokkattu

Schools that use Turnitin had access to the AI detection software for a free pilot period, which ended at the start of this year. Chechitelli says a majority of the service’s clients have opted to purchase the AI detection. But the risks of false positives and bias against English learners have led some universities to ditch the tools for now. Montclair State University in New Jersey announced in November that it would pause use of Turnitin’s AI detector. Vanderbilt University and Northwestern University did the same last summer.

“This is hard. I understand why people want a tool,” says Emily Isaacs, executive director of the Office of Faculty Excellence at Montclair State. But Isaacs says the university is concerned about potentially biased results from AI detectors, as well as the fact that the tools can’t provide confirmation the way they can with plagiarism. Plus, Montclair State doesn’t want to put a blanket ban on AI, which will have some place in academia. With time and more trust in the tools, the policies could change. “It’s not a forever decision, it’s a now decision,” Isaacs says.

Chechitelli says the Turnitin tool shouldn’t be the only consideration in passing or failing a student. Instead, it’s a chance for teachers to start conversations with students that touch on all of the nuance in using generative AI. “People don’t really know where that line should be,” she says.

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Now Hiring: Sophisticated (but Part-Time) Chatbot Tutors

The human work of teaching A.I. is getting a lot more complex as the technology improves.

Chelsea Becker, with her two children, started gig work training chatbots after she went on leave after her daughter was born. Credit... Hannah Yoon for The New York Times

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By Yiwen Lu

Reporting from San Francisco

• April 10, 2024

After her second child was born, Chelsea Becker took an unpaid, yearlong leave from her full-time job as a flight attendant. After watching a video on TikTok, she found a side hustle: training artificial intelligence models for a website called Data Annotation Tech.

For a few hours every day, Ms. Becker, 33, who lives in Schwenksville, Pa., would sit at her laptop and interact with an A.I.-powered chatbot. For every hour of work, she was paid $20 to $40. From December to March, she made over $10,000.

The boom in A.I. technology has put a more sophisticated spin on a kind of gig work that doesn’t require leaving the house. The growth of large language models like the technology powering OpenAI’s ChatGPT has fueled the need for trainers like Ms. Becker, fluent English speakers who can produce quality writing.

It is not a secret that A.I. models learn from humans. For years, makers of A.I. systems like Google and OpenAI have relied on low-paid workers, typically contractors employed through other companies, to help computers visually identify subjects. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, on claims of copyright infringement.) They might label vehicles and pedestrians for self-driving cars or identify images on photos used to train A.I. systems.

But as A.I. technology has become more sophisticated, so has the job of people who must painstakingly teach it. Yesterday’s photo tagger is today’s essay writer.

There are usually two types of work for these trainers: supervised learning, where the A.I. learns from human-generated writing, and reinforcement learning from human feedback , where the chatbot learns from how humans rate their responses.

Companies that specialize in data curation, including the San Francisco-based start-ups Scale AI and Surge AI, hire contractors and sell their training data to bigger developers. Developers of A.I. models, such as the Toronto-based start-up Cohere, also recruit in-house data annotators.

It is difficult to estimate the total number of these gig workers, researchers said. But Scale AI, which hires contractors through its subsidiaries, Remotasks and Outlier, said it was common to see tens of thousands of people working on the platform at a given time.

But as with other types of gig work, the ease of flexible hours comes with its own challenges. Some workers said they never interacted with administrators behind the recruitment sites, and others had been cut off from the work with no explanation. Researchers have also raised concerns over a lack of standards, since workers typically don’t receive training on what are considered to be appropriate chatbot answers.

To become one of these contractors, workers have to pass an assessment, which includes questions like whether a social media post should be considered hateful, and why. Another one requires a more creative approach, asking contracting prospects to write a fictional short story about a green dancing octopus, set in Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX offices on Nov. 8, 2022. (That was the day Binance, an FTX competitor , said it would buy Mr. Bankman-Fried’s company before later quickly backing out of the deal.)

Sometimes, companies look for subject matter experts. Scale AI has posted jobs for contract writers who hold master’s or doctoral degrees in Hindi and Japanese. Outlier has job listings that mention requirements like academic degrees in math, chemistry and physics.

“What really makes the A.I. useful to its users is the human layer of data, and that really needs to be done by smart humans and skilled humans and humans with a particular degree of expertise and a creative bent,” said Willow Primack, vice president of data operations at Scale AI. “We have been focusing on contractors, particularly within North America, as a result.”

Alynzia Fenske, a self-published fiction writer, had never interacted with an A.I. chatbot before hearing a lot from fellow writers who considered A.I. a threat. So when she came across a video on TikTok about Data Annotation Tech, part of her motivation was just to learn as much about A.I. as she could and see for herself whether the fears surrounding A.I. were warranted.

“It’s giving me a whole different view of it now that I’ve been working with it,” said Ms. Fenske, 28, who lives in Oakley, Wis. “It is comforting knowing that there are human beings behind it.” Since February, she has been aiming for 15 hours of data annotation work every week so she can support herself while pursuing a writing career.

Ese Agboh, 28, a master’s student studying computer science at the University of Arkansas, was given the task of coding projects, which paid $40 to $45 an hour. She would ask the chatbot to design a motion sensor program that helps gymgoers count their repetitions, and then evaluate the computer codes written by the A.I. In another case, she would load a data set about grocery items to the program and ask the chatbot to design a monthly budget. Sometimes she would even evaluate other annotators’ codes, which experts said are used to ensure data quality.

She made $2,500. But her account was permanently suspended by the platform for violating its code of conduct. She did not receive an explanation, but she suspected that it was because she worked while in Nigeria, since the site wanted workers based in only certain countries.

That is the fundamental challenge of online gig work: It can disappear at any time. With no one available for help, frustrated contractors turned to social media, sharing their experiences on Reddit and TikTok. Jackie Mitchell, 26, gained a large following on TikTok because of her content on side hustles, including data annotation work.

“I get the appeal,” she said, referring to side hustles as an “unfortunate necessity” in this economy and “a hallmark of my generation and the generation above me.”

Public records show that Surge AI owns Data Annotation Tech. Neither the company nor its chief executive, Edwin Chen, responded to requests for comments.

It is common for companies to hire contractors through subsidiaries. They do so to protect the identity of their customers, and it helps them avoid bad press associated with working conditions for its low-paid contract workers, said James Muldoon, a University of Essex management professor whose research focuses on A.I. data work.

A majority of today’s data workers depend on wages from their gig work. Milagros Miceli, a sociologist and computer scientist researching labor conditions in data work, said that while “a lot of people are doing this for fun, because of the gamification that comes with it,” a bulk of the work is still “done by workers who actually really need the money and do this as a main income.”

Researchers are also concerned about the lack of safety standards in data labeling. Workers are sometimes asked to address sensitive issues like whether certain events or acts should be considered genocide or what gender should appear in an A.I.-generated image of a soccer team, but they are not trained on how to make that evaluation.

“It’s fundamentally not a good idea to outsource or crowdsource concerns about safety and ethics,” Professor Muldoon said. “You need to be guided by principles and values, and what your company actually decides as the right thing to do on a particular issue.”

Yiwen Lu reports on technology for The Times. More about Yiwen Lu

Explore Our Coverage of Artificial Intelligence

News  and Analysis

U.S. clinics are starting to offer patients a new service: having their mammograms read not just by a radiologist, but also by an A.I. model .

OpenAI unveiled Voice Engine , an A.I. technology that can recreate a person’s voice from a 15-second recording.

Amazon said it had added $2.75 billion to its investment in Anthropic , an A.I. start-up that competes with companies like OpenAI and Google.

The Age of A.I.

A.I. tools can replace much of Wall Street’s entry-level white-collar work , raising tough questions about the future of finance.

The boom in A.I. technology has put a more sophisticated spin on a kind of gig work that doesn’t require leaving the house: training A.I, models .

Teen girls are confronting an epidemic of deepfake nudes in schools  across the United States, as middle and high school students have used A.I. to fabricate explicit images of female classmates.

A.I. is peering into restaurant garbage pails  and crunching grocery-store data to try to figure out how to send less uneaten food into dumpsters.

David Autor, an M.I.T. economist and tech skeptic, argues that A.I. is fundamentally different  from past waves of computerization.

Economists doubt that A.I. is already visible in productivity data . Big companies, however, talk often about adopting it to improve efficiency.

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