how do teachers check for ai

Teachers check for AI-generated work mainly by using a combination of manual analysis and specialized AI detection tools. They look for unnatural phrasing, repetitive patterns, inconsistencies in tone, overly formal or generic content, and unusual vocabulary. They often compare the suspected work to the student’s previous writing style and check for lack of personality or emotional depth, as AI-generated texts tend to be impersonal and less nuanced. Teachers also verify facts since AI can produce errors or outdated information. Additionally, many educators use AI detection software such as Copyleaks, GPTZero, Turnitin with AI detection features, TraceGPT, and others. These tools analyze writing patterns for statistical markers like perplexity (randomness of word choices) and burstiness (variation in sentence length) to estimate the likelihood the text was generated by AI. Such software can highlight suspicious parts of the text and provide a probability score or percentage of AI-generated content. These strategies combined—professional judgment, comparison with known student work, fact-checking, and AI detection tools—help teachers identify when AI has been used inappropriately in assignments, fostering academic integrity while addressing the challenges posed by advanced AI writing.