Lecturer detects bot use in one-fifth of assessments as concerns mount over AI in exams

An associate communications lecturer at Deakin University has detected the use of bots in almost one-fifth of assessments, sparking concerns that the use of artificial technology to cheat in exams is widespread.

Tech developers who have created software they claim detects text composed by ChatGPT have had mixed results.

Brandon is awaiting confirmation as to whether the results of her bot detector will count as a formal breach of academic integrity.

When she asked the AI to answer a question on the tort of negligence specific to Australian law, there were factual inaccuracies and made-up references.

Pushing the technology further, she asked it to describe the recent supreme court case on abortion in the US. The current dataset ChatGPT is trained on expires after 2021, prior to the ruling being handed down.

Dilan Thampapillai, associate dean at the University of NSW business school, has tried a few searches with the chatbot and also found it had misidentified information in multiple results.

Other similar software, including ChatSonic, can use live Google data in its responses.

He found the chatbot had fabricated references from academic website Trove and referenced fake quotes from the local paper drawn from other newspapers and articles.