York Uni students' fears over Turnitin essay-checker AI plan

University students have raised concerns over the software used to submit assignments and check them for plagiarism, amid fears their work could be used to train tools which use artificial intelligence.

The University of York Students' Union said planned changes to the licence agreement for the Turnitin system could see students' work used to teach AI models.

The University of York has said it would review any changes to the software's terms and conditions, while the University of Southampton has already started to phase out the system.

A spokesperson for Turnitin said its policy would not be updated any earlier than September 2027 to "give us time to discuss any changes with customers".

The tools which have caused concern use machine learning to compare students' work to other submissions and existing academic articles in an effort to identify potential plagiarism, but they do not reproduce or write students' work.

Sam Dickinson, union affairs officer at York Students' Union, said students' concerns were raised in August before Turnitin announced that any changes would not take place at least until September next year.

"The key issue here is that students' intellectual property is something that should belong to them," he explained.

"I think there's a fear when AI policies are introduced like this that their work is going to be whisked away and used for something other than student progress at university."

Dickinson said a falling number of graduate job vacancies, partly attributed to AI, contributed to "massive anxiety" among students.

Meanwhile, they were also concerned "more broadly that AI is being used to train services without the meaningful consent of the people who created that content".

"If your university is using Turnitin and it's using student-submitted work to train AI services, you can't meaningfully consent to that because you have to submit your work to get marked," he said.

"If you're at university, if you're writing about things you really, really care about, you should own that work and be able to decide whether it's used to train AI services."

In a statement, a spokesperson for the California-based tech firm said: "As Turnitin has expanded the in-product use of AI, and as we assist customers in navigating their own AI use, our institutional agreements were updated to reflect current data practices.

"To give us time to discuss any changes with customers, we are not updating it any earlier than September 1, 2027.

"We do not use customer or student work to train the AI assistant within Turnitin Clarity.

"We may use anonymized student submissions to improve our detection and assessment tools."

A spokesperson for the University of York said Turnitin had been contact and the university understood that "no changes will be made to our terms and conditions, and our students' data will not be used to train their AI services".

"Safeguarding intellectual property and data privacy are really important to us," they said.

"If such a provider changes their terms and conditions, this is something we would review, and we are meeting with the Students' Union to discuss the issues raised."

According to the website Uni Compare, 98% of UK universities used Turnitin products.

However, the University of Southampton has said it would be "phasing out the use of this service immediately" and would not renew its contract with Turnitin after the 2026-27 academic year.

A spokesperson for the university said: "We have a responsibility to protect the data, intellectual property and academic work of our students and the university.

"While we understand Turnitin has postponed changes to the end-user licence agreement that would have allowed it to use student submissions to train AI services, it has not fully clarified what future changes may be imposed."

The spokesperson added that other options were being evaluated "to ensure that academic integrity standards are maintained".

Students' Union presidents at the University of Reading have said they were "aware of students' concerns" about the proposed changes to the licence agreements for Turnitin.

In a statement on Instagram, they said they would "ask what the university's plans are, how it intends to protect students' interests and what any future changes could mean for submitting assessments".

Meanwhile, the undergraduate education officer at the University of East Anglia Students' Union said they had held "positive discussions" with uni bosses about Turnitin.

"There is strong inclination from both sides to move away from the usage of the service with Turnitin's change in terms and conditions and for smoother university operation," they added.

At Lancaster University, Students' Union education officer Niamh McAuley said in a video on social media that she was due to hold discussions with the university with the aim of stopping students' work being used to train AI.

She told students: "Your work should belong to you and you should fundamentally make decisions whether it's being used."

Emily Bannister, St Andrews University's SU president for education, said the proposed policy change was a "fundamental challenge to the principles of academic integrity" .

She said she had written to Turnitin's CEO and the university's leadership team, with "positive engagement" so far.

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