What should a student do if an AI detector flags their work?

Turnitin's statement is in its AI writing detection FAQ; Vanderbilt's reasoning is in its August 2023 notice.

Collect your process evidence first

What counts as evidence, and how much weight it carries

Evidence	What it shows	Weight
Detector score alone	A statistical guess about the text	Low: independent tests find detectors unreliable as evidence
Version history with timestamps	The document grew over time in your hands	High
Drafts, outlines and notes	A writing process, not a paste	High
A conversation about the argument and sources	You understand what you wrote	High

• Version history. Google Docs, Microsoft Word with OneDrive, and most writing tools keep a timestamped history of edits. Export or screenshot it before anything else.
• Drafts and notes. Outlines, early drafts, research notes, highlighted sources and saved searches all show a writing process.
• Sources. A list of what you read and when, including library records or browser history if you are comfortable sharing it.
• Anything you used legitimately. If you used a grammar checker or a translation tool and that was allowed, say so plainly and show where.

Ask the right questions

Ask which tool was used, what score it gave, and which passages it highlighted. Ask what your institution's policy says about AI detection evidence. Some institutions do not allow detector scores to be used on their own, and some have switched detection off entirely. Vanderbilt disabled Turnitin's AI detector in 2023, citing the risk of false positives across tens of thousands of papers a year and the lack of transparency about how scores are produced.

Point to the research, calmly

It is reasonable to share independent evidence about detector reliability. The 2023 test of 14 tools by Weber-Wulff and colleagues concluded that none was accurate or reliable enough to serve as evidence. If you write in a second language, the Stanford study on bias against non-native writers is directly relevant, and the forum's thread on that bias summarises what it found.

Offer to demonstrate

Offering to talk through your argument, explain your sources or write a short piece under supervision is often the fastest way to resolve a case. It shows understanding of the material, which is what the assessment is meant to measure.