With the rapid development of generative AI technology, students once enjoyed the "sweet taste" of quickly completing their assignments. Between 2023 and 2024, many college students used tools like ChatGPT to generate papers in just 10 minutes, confidently believing that teachers could not detect it. However, this honeymoon period seems to have ended, as universities around the world are rapidly entering an "anti-AI assignment" mode.

In recent years, the academic community was initially at a loss when dealing with AI-generated writing. According to statistics, more than half of American students used generative AI in some way to complete their assignments, which posed unprecedented challenges to traditional teaching methods. But by 2025, the situation has completely reversed, as the rise of AI assignment detection tools has made everything different.

ChatGPT

Image source note: The image is AI-generated, provided by the AI image generation service Midjourney

Recently, detection tools like GPTZero have rapidly entered the market. These tools not only assess whether a text contains AI-generated content but also track paste records, timestamps, and even analyze which model generated the content. This means that when a student pastes a piece of content at 2:08 AM, teachers can clearly see it. These tools have become widespread on platforms like Google Docs, allowing teachers to easily verify assignments without additional effort.

Faced with an increasingly strict detection environment, students have not given up. Instead, AI "humanization" services have emerged, claiming to rewrite AI-generated texts to make them more similar to human writing styles. These services add spelling errors, redundant words, and even simulate personal tones to deceive detection tools. However, this strategy's effectiveness is short-lived, as with the continuous improvement of detection technology, teachers are becoming increasingly capable of identifying the true origins of generated texts.

Currently, the education sector is facing a dilemma. Supporters of strict detection argue that students should not rely too much on AI, as it may affect their future professional skills; opponents, however, worry that overly strict detection may mistakenly penalize normal writing. Experts call on schools to explore how to reasonably integrate AI technology, such as allowing the use of AI during the research phase, but requiring the core ideas to be completed by the students themselves.

In this battle between humans and AI, how the future educational model will evolve is worth our continued attention.