Marley Stevens, a junior at the University of North Georgia, submitted a paper for her criminal justice class on Oct. 3, 2023. Later that month, on Oct. 26, she got an email from her professor that she received a zero after Turnitin apparently detected AI software in her paper. The AI software in question? Grammarly. “At first I was like, did he send the email to the wrong person?” she says in an exclusive interview with Her Campus. “I was really confused.”
The 21-year-old spoke with her professor, the department head, and the dean, and was told she was “unintentionally cheating” despite Grammarly having written “absolutely nothing” for her. “I didn’t even write it in Grammarly. I have the extension in my Google Doc and the free account, so it’s not doing anything extra for me except for checking my punctuation and my spelling,” she said in a TikTok. She tells Her Campus, “The [Grammarly] I had was basically just a fancy spell check.”
Stevens has been uploading TikToks about her situation since December, and in February, she had a hearing to determine whether or not she would be found guilty of “plagiarism” and “outside use without proper authorization from the professor.” She confirmed in a recent update that on Feb. 16, less than 24 hours after her hearing, she lost the case and was put on “conduct probation” for a year. Stevens now has to take a seminar about cheating and academic honesty, which will cost her $105 and take around 15 hours for her to complete. Her Campus reached out to the Office of Integrity at the University of North Georgia for comment but didn’t hear back by the time of publication.
Stevens wanted to appeal the hearing’s decision, but was told that since her case didn’t end in “expulsion, suspension, or removal from an academic program,” she couldn’t appeal it. Since Stevens is on probation, if something happens again, she could be kicked out of school.
With Stevens’ original December video reaching over 4.8 million views and her February update currently skyrocketing, it’s clear that college students are both invested and concerned about how AI may affect their college lives.
Stevens says the email detailing the probation decision left her stunned. “I thought I had it in the bag. And then I opened the letter, and was like, ‘What? Are you kidding me right now?’ I really was just kind of shocked,” she says. She says she explained her proper usage of Grammarly on her paper during the hearing, and even ran her paper through a second website (one her professor had said was used to check it) and it had come back AI-free.
Stevens explains the class syllabus says “don’t use AI,” but she was originally unaware that Grammarly had AI written into its code. Her knowledge of AI was solely based on how systems like ChatGPT could write an essay for you. “Before this started, as far as I knew, when AI did your homework, [ChatGPT] was my idea of it. I didn’t know that AI was also built into Grammarly,” she says.
“We’re in touch with Marley about this issue to offer our support,” Grammarly says in a statement to Her Campus. “Grammarly has been committed to promoting the responsible and productive use of AI in the classroom since our founding in 2009. Grammarly helps students improve their writing by offering suggestions for spelling, grammatical correctness, clarity, concision, and tone. These suggestions are not powered by generative AI, and do not meaningfully change the meaning of the original writing; the suggestions are merely meant to help the author be more clear, concise, and accurate in conveying the messages they intend to convey.”
Furthermore, Grammarly says, “Some third-party tools may mistakenly identify any use of Grammarly — including writing improvement suggestions — as AI-generated content. We encourage institutions to establish clear policies on acceptable AI usage and adhere to those guidelines when assessing student success.”
Stevens was battling the AI accusation for over four months, living in a state of limbo. Knowing that she didn’t use generative AI to write her paper — but being blamed for cheating nonetheless — was a huge source of anxiety for her. “It was indescribably stressful. I broke out all the time. I had a headache all the time. I lost so much sleep over this,” she says. “I was like, ‘How am I supposed to focus on my finals when I’m worried that I’m going to get in trouble for cheating while all of this is going on?’”
Stevens’ TikToks on the situation have been met with both praise and disapproval, with some users expressing their anger over the situation and others implying she should’ve known better. To those criticizing her, Stevens says, “A lot of people were like, ‘Oh, well when I was in college, we didn’t have this stuff and we were expected to know everything.’ Well, yes, but now [AI] is becoming a thing.” She continues, “Professors are so picky about stuff now because we have these tools. Unless you’re going to college right now and you understand how these professors talk to us and grade things, I just think you have to be in [school] right now to know how it works.”
With her case not ending in her favor, Stevens now has some pointed advice to incoming and current college students on handling AI in the classroom. “Talk to your professors individually. Ask them very specific questions about things like Grammarly or different editing programs … and email them, so it’s in writing,” she says. “[The answer] changes professor to professor, especially if they don’t have a schoolwide policy about [AI].”
Now that all is said and done, Stevens just hopes to be a cautionary tale for other college students using AI tools in the classroom. “Hopefully, me telling people about this will help other people avoid it,” she says. “That’s my goal.”