Fac de Lyon: a teacher discovers that his students have had their copies written by an artificial intelligence

It's a homework whose copies were too similar.

Stéphane Bonvallet, professor at the University of Lyon (Rhône) has noticed that the quality of the homework submitted by his Master's students (Bac + 4 and + 5) has changed, report our colleagues from Progress.

By cross-checking the similarities in the writing, the answers, the anecdotes used by the students' copies, he was able to unmask a major cheating operation since 50% of the copies were written by the ChatGPT artificial intelligence.

If the copies were not exactly identical, 7 of the 14 students of this university teacher in handicapology overlapped.

They had to answer the subject: "Defining the main features of the medical approach to disability in Europe".

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“It was not about copying and pasting.

But the copies were built in exactly the same way, he tells Le Progrès.

We find the same grammatical constructions.

The reasoning was conducted in the same order, with the same qualities and the same faults.

Finally, they were all illustrated by a personal example, relating to a grandmother or a grandfather… It therefore seemed obvious that these copies were not normal”.

The phenomenon would be global

After dismissing the thesis of plagiarism from a website, Stéphane Bonvallet admits however not having "immediately understood what it is".

He has the same number of words in the answers and also “very few spelling mistakes, very few grammar mistakes, which hardly corresponds to reality”, he slips to France Inter.

He then decided to question one of his students, whose homework was suspicious.

The embarrassment on his face made him confess everything.

“She told me that 50% of the students in the class had used ChatGPT artificial intelligence to write their paper.

Apparently, they had spread the word on social networks.

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He said he was then flabbergasted, “having never thought of this artificial intelligence capable of being so efficient (…) in particular by writing an assignment that deserved the average mark”.

Finding no sanction evoking this possibility in the university regulations, he decided to give the same mark of 11.75 to the seven students concerned.

He says he informed the management to whom he gave the copies.

An investigation has been opened.

"This practice poses a real problem of integration of knowledge because the students no longer need to carry out any research to compose", worries Stéphane Bonvallet.

Especially since after having exchanged this new “cheat” with his colleagues, many assured him of having to do with “shady copies” for several weeks.

High schools in particular would be the most exposed.

"I don't know how this will work out.

But we will have to find a solution quickly…”, concludes the teacher.