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Quill.org and CommonLit Launch AI Writing Check Site to Help Teachers Identify AI-Generated Writing

January 25th, 2023

By Peter Gault

Quill.org and CommonLit have collaborated on a free new tool that allows educators to determine whether a text passage was created by humans or AI.

Education technology nonprofits Quill.org and CommonLit.org have launched AIWritingCheck.org, which will empower teachers - and others concerned about the impact of ChatGPT’s potential for misuse - to determine whether writing was human or AI-generated. At www.aiwritingcheck.org, teachers may enter a passage of text and, with the click of a button, learn whether the text was likely generated by a student or a computer.

In K-12 education, ChatGPT’s launch has prompted discussion about how to best equip teachers and students with tools to preserve academic integrity and protect the critically important skill of learning how to write. In a survey of more than 750 educators on the Quill platform, more than 83% are concerned that students may use ChatGPT to complete assignments for them. Quill and CommonLit built AI Writing Check as a stopgap measure to help teachers identify AI-generated writing until more sophisticated technology can be developed.

Quill and CommonLit built this new tool to be free, scalable, and user-friendly. AIWritingCheck.org requires no account or subscription to use and is funded through philanthropic donations. AI Writing Check can process up to 100,000 essays per day and has an accuracy rate of 80-90%.

With the launch of AI Writing Check, the organizations remind teachers that many AI text detection tools are not 100% accurate and can generate false positives and false negatives, and should therefore be used with caution to address academic dishonesty. Alongside the launch of AI Writing Check, the nonprofits developed a toolkit to help educators utilize AI detection tools responsibility and talk about AI in the classroom. With the launch, Quill and CommonLit founders express their commitment to continue to support teachers in navigating the changing landscape and fast developments in AI, acting as translators between the tech, edtech, and K-12 communities.

AI Writing Check’s underlying algorithm was created by OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT. The algorithm identifies specific language and syntactical patterns that are not quite like a human’s writing. Quill and CommonLit have taken this open-source algorithm and built a freely available site to allow educators to easily access and use this technology.

Peter Gault, Quill.org’s Founder and Executive Director, said, “As tools like ChatGPT become ubiquitous and more advanced over time, many fear that millions of students will stop engaging in the critically important intellectual exercise of carefully reading a text, building a response, applying the rules of grammar, and revising their writing with feedback. While Quill is built on top of AI, we believe that AI should be used to encourage students to do more writing, not for the AI to write for the students.”

Michelle Brown, CommonLit’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer, said, “The shortcut of using ChatGPT to do the thinking for you is not one that children will so easily overcome. In K-12, it’s the exercise of writing and thinking that goes into organizing your thoughts that matters – not just the output. Education isn’t just about creating economic value; it’s about human development. It’s about our kids, and building their skills and confidence to become leaders who can communicate and leverage advanced tools.“

Quill.org and CommonLit.org collectively serve more than 10 million economically disadvantaged students each year with free educational materials, representing 20% of all K-12 students. Quill.org’s mission is to help every low-income student in the United States become a strong writer and critical thinker, through free online tools that help teachers by using artificial intelligence to automatically grade and provide feedback on student writing. CommonLit’s nonprofit mission is to unlock the potential of every child through reading, writing, speaking, listening, problem-solving, and collaboration.

Read more in Fast Company's coverage of the launch.

To learn more about AIWritingCheck.org, please contact Quill at support@quill.org.

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