On Grammarly and "Write My Essay for Me"

Plus, ICAI Day of Action is October 16. Plus, Educause hosts a panel with Chegg. Plus, Wichita State University President accused of plagiarism.

Issue 315

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On Grammarly Again

Joseph Thibault, who runs the outstanding Substack “This Is Not Fine,” and is a friend of our work here at “The Cheat Sheet,” posted this to his LinkedIn account recently:

I share it because it’s more evidence of a problem at Grammarly. And it’s not a new problem.

A year ago, back in October of 2023, people were warned about using Grammarly as an AI writing tool (see Issue 249). Since then, the company’s products and services have steadily drifted from benign grammar assistant to full-on cheating and plagiarism providers.

When I started sharing that Grammarly helps students detect the amount of plagiarism in a document before turning it in (see Issue 284), and that the company was aggressively pushing back on evidence that its created content could be identified by AI detectors, even defending those accused of cheating (see Issue 279), there was dissent. “It’s just Grammarly,” people said.

My belief then, and now, is that people have failed to internalize that Grammarly does provide grammar assistance but it also provides full-fledged AI writing services. Right now, their own webpages promote that, with Grammarly Pro, you can:

Generate text with 2,000 monthly prompts and adapt your writing for a variety of audiences instantly with AI that sounds like you.

Yes, Grammarly can generate text that sounds like you. They even have a free version.

I’ll also bet that most people don’t know that Grammarly offers a paid service where someone can submit written material and a human editor will clean it up. Yes, for less than seven cents a word, a human at Grammarly will edit your document in 24 hours or less. For 18 cents a word, they will get you edits in three hours or less.

In other words, in practice, it’s possible to get Grammarly to write work for you and send it through a human editor for “clarity.” All anyone has to do is retype the assignment into Grammarly and get out their debit card. Grammarly will even check it for plagiarism for you. How helpful.

Someone, please tell me how that’s different than paying an essay mill to write your paper.

I’m not trying to pick on Grammarly, although I do wish they’d stop trying to have it both ways — advertising how they can write for you (see Issue 279 or the LinkedIn example above), while simultaneously claiming they only advise and guide students and that using their products is not cheating.

I do want to raise awareness of what Grammarly is and does now because many — very many — schools and educators explicitly authorize students to use Grammarly, without specifying which of the things Grammarly does are permitted and which are not. I suspect that Grammarly drafting and editing an academic paper for a student, which Grammarly does, would be disallowed in most cases. I also suspect students know the difference between a suggested grammar edit and spewing out 700 words of text on command. At the same time, if a teacher says Grammarly is allowed, many students will pretend they thought every facet of the service was allowed. And some may even be genuinely confused.

Either way, “Grammarly” is not one thing anymore. Instead, one of the many things it is now is a cheating engine.

October 16 — International Day of Action

The ICAI — International Center for Academic Integrity — has designated Wednesday, October 16, as the International Day of Action.

Resources and activities, including online presentations and panels, are at the link above.

Wichita State University President Accused of Plagiarism

The President of Wichita State University has been accused of plagiarism in his doctorate work, some twenty years ago, according to coverage in the school’s student newspaper.

First, shout out to the paper, The Sunflower, for quoting a student using the full f-bomb, twice. Fire.

It does seem that the consensus on campus, at least according to the cited reporting, is that the accusation is much ado about very little — about 750 words in question from an 88-page paper. Words, it seems, that were cited but not disclosed in quotation marks in the paper.

As big an issue, at least for me, is that this is another example of motivated folks checking old work for anything that smells like misconduct. We’re already seeing it, and we’re going to see a ton more of it. Worse, as I’ve written before, just wait until generation generative AI gets into CEO and college President’s offices and AI detection gets really, really good.

Train. Wreck.

Educause is Latest to Sanction Chegg

Educause, the non-profit with the mission of “advancing higher education through the use of IT,” has created an online panel featuring cheating provider Chegg.

The webinar is titled:

From Hype to Reality: AI-Driven Innovations for Student Success in Higher Education

The event predictably extolls the virtues of AI in education:

By leveraging AI’s adaptive capabilities, students can receive tailored content and real-time feedback to foster a more inclusive and effective learning environment. Advancements in AI are expected to further refine these personalized learning systems and make education more accessible, affordable and equitable.

Sure.

But more importantly, the webinar features Nina Huntemann, Chief Academic Officer at Chegg. It also features Paul Kim, who is listed as “committee chair” at World Bank but whose bio also says is, “an advisor to Chegg.” This is not the first time Kim has appeared on stage with Chegg (see Issue 195).

Also on the panel is Robbie Grant, who is listed as Executive Director of Academic Technology at New Mexico State University.

The New Mexico State policy on academic integrity is pretty weak, though it does say that “academic dishonesty” includes:

Cheating, knowingly assisting another in committing an act of cheating, having knowledge of cheating by others and not reporting it

And:

The use of another person’s work without acknowledgment, making it appear to be one’s own.

As such, I wonder if Mr. Grant really knows what it is Chegg does. I wonder further whether it’s the best look for him and his university to be in public with two Chegg officers while the company is being sued for fraud and violating cheating laws in the United States and in Australia (see Issue 280 and Issue 314).

But we all make choices.

Speaking of choices, it’s deeply problematic for anyone in the education space to give a credible microphone to Chegg, for any reason. Putting known cheating profiteers in credible places, with otherwise credible people and organizations, is misleading, confusing, and dangerous. It bolsters and washes misconduct and ruins your brand — implying that you either don’t know what Chegg does (which is implausible), or that you don’t care. Either way, it’s a terrible look.