--- title: "The Turnitin AI Detection tool" canonical: "https://help.cccs.edu/space/KnowledgeBase/34963713/The%20Turnitin%20AI%20Detection%20tool" format: markdown --- **The Turnitin AI Detection tool** The Turnitin plagiarism service has added a new tool that can review submitted files to see if they have been created by AI writing tools. You can find an explanation of the process and other resources on the following pages in this document. For more details see the [Assignments and Turnitin documentation](https://community.d2l.com/brightspace/kb/articles/2876-assignments-and-turnitin) **To enable Turnitin for an assignment** 1. On the course navbar, click **Assignments**. 2. Do one of the following: - Click **New Assignment** , and enter the name, grade, date, and instruction information for your assignment. - Click **Edit Assignment** and select the assignment to which you want to add Turnitin functionality. 1. Click to expand the **Submissions and Completion** tab on the right side of the page. 2. Under **Allowable File extensions**, select the **Compatible with Turnitin **option from the drop-down menu. **Note:** If you are using Online Grading only, the **Compatible with Turnitin** option is not required. 3. Click to expand the **Evaluation & Feedback** tab located on the lower right side of the page. 4. Click on the **Manage Turnitin** link. 5. Click **Enable Similarity Report for this folder**. 6. Click E**nable Online Grading for this folder** if you want to use the Turnitin suite of feedback and grading tools. 7. Click **More Options** for a list of additional optional settings. 8. Do any of the following: - In the **Submission** settings area, indicate where and when assignments can be submitted. For more information, refer to [Turnitin assignment settings](https://help.turnitin.com/feedback-studio/d2l/instructor/creating-and-managing-assignments/turnitin-assignment-settings.htm). - In the **Compare against** area, indicate the sources against which you want to compare the submissions, including previously submitted student papers, current and archived web site content, and periodicals, journals, and publications. - In the **Similarity Report** area, indicate the timing of generating similarity reports, and the type of submission content you want to exclude (such as bibliography, quoted materials, and small sources). - In the **Exclude assignment template** area, you can upload or create a template of text that is automatically excluded from the similarity report. - In the **Additional settings** area, you can indicate if you want to save the settings you have chosen in the More Options dialog for future use. 1. Click **Submit**. 2. Click **Save**. How to see the AI usage report Once the students submit a file, the Turnitin tool will review the submitted file and generate the report. Follow these steps to review the report. 1. On the course navbar, click Assignments. 2. Click on the name of the assignment. 3. To the right of the student’s submitted file will be the Turnitin plagiarism report that shows a percentage as shown below. Click on the Percentage to open the report. 4. The AI report is located on the bottom right menu bar as shown below. The percentage score will indicate how much of the text in the submission that has been determined to be generated by AI. Click on the Percentage to see the review of the AI detection. Turnitin’s AI Writing Detection Capabilities The following information was gathered from the [TurnItIn AI Writing Detection webpage](https://www.turnitin.com/products/features/ai-writing-detection) The AI writing indicator that has been added to the Similarity Report will show an overall percentage of the document that may have been AI-generated. We make this determination with 98% confidence based on data that was collected and verified in our AI Innovation Lab. To open the new AI writing report, select the AI writing indicator. Please note, only instructors and (depending on license) account administrators will be able to see the indicator and the AI writing report at this time. The AI writing report contains the overall percentage of prose sentences contained in a long-form writing format within the submitted document that Turnitin’s model determines was generated by AI. These sentences are highlighted in blue on the submission text in the AI writing report. The percentage, generated by Turnitin’s AI writing detection model, is different and independent from the similarity score, and the AI writing highlights are not visible in the Similarity Report. Turnitin’s AI writing detection model only highlights text that is highly likely to be AI-generated. This is to help ensure that students are treated fairly whilst safeguarding the institution’s academic integrity standards. We must stress that the percentage is interpretive and should not be used as a definitive measure of misconduct or punitive tool. Instructors should use this indicative percentage to help them decide how to best handle work that may have been produced or partially produced by AI writing tools. The Review Process When a paper is submitted to Turnitin, the submission is first broken into segments of text that are roughly a few hundred words (about five to ten sentences). Those segments are then overlapped with each other to capture each sentence in context. The segments are run against our AI detection model and we give each sentence a score between 0 and 1 to determine whether it is written by a human or by AI. If our model determines that a sentence was not generated by AI, it will receive a score of 0. If it determines the entirety of the sentence was generated by AI it will receive a score of 1. Using the average scores of all the segments within the document, the model then generates an overall prediction of how much text (with 98% confidence based on data that was collected and verified in our AI innovation lab) in the submission we believe has been generated by AI. For example, when we say that 40% of the overall text has been AI-generated, we’re 98% confident that is the case. Currently, Turnitin’s AI writing detection model is trained to detect content from the GPT-3 and GPT-3.5 language models, which includes ChatGPT. We are actively working on expanding our model to enable us to better detect content from other AI language models. Instructors can see the AI detection indicator but students will not be able see it. What do the different indicators mean? Upon opening the Similarity Report, after a short period of processing, the AI writing detection indicator will show one of the following: 1. Blue with a percentage between 0 and 100: The submission has processed successfully. The displayed percentage indicates the amount of qualifying text within the submission that Turnitin’s AI writing detection model determines (with 98% of precision based on data collected and verified in a controlled lab environment) was generated by AI. As noted previously, this percentage is not necessarily the percentage of the entire submission. If text within the submission was not considered long-form prose text, it will not be included. To explore the results of the AI writing detection capabilities, select the indicator to open the AI writing report. The AI writing report opens in a new tab of the window used to launch the Similarity Report. If you have a pop-up blocker installed, ensure it allows Turnitin pop-ups. 2. Gray with no percentage displayed (- -): The AI writing detection indicator is unable to process this submission. This can be due to one, or several, of the following reasons: 3. 1. The submission was made before the release of Turnitin’s AI writing detection capabilities. The only way to see the AI writing detection indicator/report on historical submissions is to resubmit them. 2. The submission does not meet the file requirements needed to successfully process it for AI writing detection. In order for a submission to generate an AI writing report and percentage, the submission needs to meet the following requirements: 4. 1. 1. File size must be less than 100 MB 2. File must have at least 300 words of prose text in a long-form writing format 3. Files must not exceed 15,000 words 4. File must be written in English 5. Accepted file types: .docx, .pdf, .txt, .rtf Error (!): This error means that Turnitin has failed to process the submission. Turnitin is constantly working to improve its service, but unfortunately, events like this can occur. Please try again later. If the file meets all the file requirements stated above, and this error state still shows, please get in touch through our support center so we can investigate for you. Educator resources for AI writing - Find strategies for [approaching AI-generated text in the classroom](https://marketing-tii-statamic-assets-us-west-2.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/marketing/tli_ai_respondinginyourclassroom_guide_us_0123.pdf). - Minimize potential AI misuse with our [AI misuse rubric](https://marketing-tii-statamic-assets-us-west-2.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/marketing/tli_ai_misuse_rubric_guide_us_0223.pdf) to review existing writing prompts for AI vulnerability, and our [AI misuse checklist](https://marketing-tii-statamic-assets-us-west-2.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/marketing/tli_ai_misusechecklist_us_0223.pdf) to review options to proactively respond to potential AI misuse in your classroom. - Stay informed as Turnitin expands its [AI writing capabilities](https://www.turnitin.com/solutions/ai-writing).