FOI_25-138 Artificial Intelligence and academic misconduct
Date of response: 09 May 2025
We have now considered your request of 01May 2025 for the following information:
Question 1. How many recorded cases of student misconduct related to AI-generated work (e.g., ChatGPT or similar tools) have there been in the last three academic years? Please provide a breakdown by year.
Question 2. Of those cases, how many led to disciplinary action, and what specific penalties were imposed (e.g., warnings, grade reductions, suspensions, expulsions)?
How many were not proven?
Question 3. Has the university noticed a particular spike in cases since 2022/2023, when AI tools like ChatGPT became more advanced and their use more widespread?
Question 4. What methods or tools does the university use to detect AI-generated work in student submissions (e.g., Turnitin AI detection, GPTZero)?
Question 5. Does the university have a formal policy on student use of AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Grammarly, Copilot)? If so, please provide a copy or a link to the document.
Question 6. What guidance or training is provided to academic staff on identifying and addressing AI-related cheating?
Our response:
We regret that on this occasion it is not possible to provide the requested information.
Under Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act, we can confirm that the University does hold the information requested, however on this occasion it is not possible for us to provide any of the information relating to the number of recorded cases of suspected student misconduct related to Artificial Intelligence (AI) work (e.g ChatGPT or similar tools) in the last three academic years, and of those how many led to disciplinary action, how many were proven, and any rise or ‘spikes’ in cases of academic misconduct related specifically to AI since 2022-23 (Questions 1, 2 and 3).
We have determined that the cost of finding and assembling the requested information will exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ as defined by section 12 of the Act and the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004/3244.
'The ‘appropriate limit’ of £450, which equates to 18 hours’ work, as defined by the Information Commissioner’s Office, can relate to one request in its entirety or to a series of linked requests. If the University cannot locate, retrieve and extract some or all of the requested information within the 18 hours we are not obliged to retrieve any of the requested information.
To explain our position, information relating to students facing a formal misconduct investigation due to suspected academic misconduct and the nature of those investigations is held within our Learning and Teaching Services division (LTS), however this division does not routinely record the number of academic misconduct cases involving Artificial Intelligence (AI) specifically. There is no sub-categorisation applied to cases of academic misconduct records, which would allow us to clearly separate out those cases involving AI only.
The only way of identifying, extracting, and recording the exact information you seek would be to interrogate each individual formal misconduct investigation case file manually, to ascertain which cases involved the suspected use of Artificial Intelligence.
We have identified 453 formal misconduct investigations into just one category of academic misconduct; suspected plagiarism and collusion, for the academic year 2023-24 alone, which may fall into the scope of your request.
We have calculated it would take a total of 10 minutes per each student academic misconduct case file, for those held for 2023-24 year alone, or 75.5 hours, to locate and manually interrogate each individual file. Which exceeds the appropriate time limit as outlined above.
To assist you in formulating a request to which we can respond, we can provide responses to questions 4, 5 and 6 of your request.
Please note we have not considered whether any exemptions may apply to such a request.
We should also point out that any revised request you submit will be treated as a new FOI request, and the 20 working-day time-limit will begin again.
We are sorry we cannot provide the data you requested, but trust this response explains our position.