Edtech giant prepares to offer customers new tool from April as it grapples with challenges posed by ChatGPT
Turnitin will make its artificial intelligence writing detector available “as early as April”, claiming it can identify ChatGPT-authored writing 97 per cent of the time.
The capability of ChatGPT has the potential to disrupt scientific writing, education and research in general. If the producer’s claims are accurate, this system could be a huge relief for publisher, research institutions and research funding bodies. There are some who are dubious about the claimed accuracy of the detector. This Times Higher Education piece discusses claims and the concerns in the education sector about ChatGPT.
Companies have been scrambling to offer a tool capable of judging if a student has used ChatGPT since its hugely successful launch by the company OpenAI last year. In January, the software became one of the fastest-growing technological tools of all time when it reached 100 million active users after just two months.
Turnitin said its detector “identifies 97 per cent of ChatGPT and GPT3 authored writing, with a very low less than 1/100 false positive rate”.
“Based on how our detection technology is performing in our lab and with a significant number of test samples, we are confident that Turnitin’s AI writing detection capabilities will give educators information to help them decide how to best handle work that may have been influenced by AI writing tools,” said Annie Chechitelli, chief product officer at Turnitin.
