Cheating used to be copying the paper of another person. Now people can still cheat like this or get on an artificial intelligence (AI) program essay writer and copy that essay. 

AI writing has become very popular in high schools, and Chapman is no different. 

AI essay writers will write an essay that is completely original. Essay writers like Chat GPT write excellent essays but they will make up quotes, so they aren’t a hundred percent reliable. Also, now there are AI checkers that teachers use to see if a human writes an essay. 

English teacher Andy Lopez has been dealing with these issues in the classroom. 

“Mainly the students lose their technical ability to write,” Lopez said.

Lopez has been comparing essays written by AI and essays written by humans. At first glance, it might look the same but when you actually read it, you can see major differences. 

“They sound cold in tone, there is not really a personal opinion or point of view and there is useless background information that serves no use to the essay,” Lopez said. 

Computer science teacher Marie Johnson explains AI essay writers as similar to MADLIBS, Where you give the computer a topic, and the website searches for information on that topic. She also explained how the checkers work.

“I don’t ever want to suspect anyone of using AI.”When you have algorithms that write an essay there are certain patterns with those algorithms. And repeating certain arrangements and it sets off a red flag in the website and it knows that this was not written by a person.” Johnson said. 

Recently the school computers blocked Chat GPT, so now if students want to cheat, they will have to use their phones or another website. Lopez hopes we can find more ways to stop students from cheating. 

“I never want to see any student as a cheater,” Lopez said.