Guidance on AI Detection and Why We’re Disabling Turnitin’s AI Detector

What You Should Know

Vanderbilt disabled Turnitin’s AI detector after finding serious concerns around its reliability, lack of transparency, potential bias, and student privacy. Their experience highlights a fundamental problem with trying to manage AI use by simply asking, “Can we detect it?”

Why should educators care? Instead of relying on imperfect AI detectors after the fact, institutions can create environments where AI use is more transparent and controlled from the start. Typerighter takes this approach by giving institutions visibility into the writing process—including how AI is used—while reducing students’ reliance on unrestricted public LLMs. Instructors can also apply AI policy controls through Typerighter, setting clear boundaries for when and how AI tools may be used in assignments and guiding students toward responsible, policy-aligned use.

In April of this year, Turnitin released an update to their product that reviewed submitted papers and presented their determination of how much of a paper was written by AI. As we outlined at that time, many people had important concerns and questions about this new tool, namely how the product exactly works and how reliable the results would be. After several months of using and testing this tool, meeting with Turnitin and other AI leaders, and talking to other universities who also have access, Vanderbilt has decided to disable Turnitin’s AI detection tool for the foreseeable future. This decision was not made lightly and was made in pursuit of the best interests of our students and faculty. [Read the full article.]