A few weeks into her sophomore year of college, Leigh Burrell received a notification that made her stomach drop. She had been given a zero on an assignment that counted for 15 percent of her final grade in a mandatory writing course. In a brief note, her professor stated he suspected she had outsourced her paper—a mock cover letter—to an A. I. chatbot. “My heart just freaking stops, ” said Ms. Burrell, 23, a computer science major at the University of Houston-Downtown. However, Ms. Burrell’s submission was not, in reality, the instant output of a chatbot. According to the Google Docs editing history reviewed by The New York Times, she had drafted and revised the assignment over two days.

Despite this, it was flagged by a service from the plagiarism-detection company Turnitin, designed to detect text generated by artificial intelligence. Alarmed, Ms. Burrell appealed the decision. After sending a 15-page PDF containing time-stamped screenshots and notes documenting her writing process to the chair of her English department, her grade was reinstated. Nevertheless, the experience highlighted for her the risks students face—even those who are honest—in an academic environment complicated by A. I. -related cheating. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode, please exit and log into your Times account or subscribe for full access to The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber?Log in. Want full access to The Times?Subscribe.