Porto University professor discovers 50 student papers all written by ChatGPT

A professor at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Porto was surprised to receive 50 papers from first-year students that did not contain a single typo or error.

When Rui Sousa Silva began to correct them, he noticed something strange. None of the works contained a single spelling or grammatical error, not even a small typo, something he had never never witnessed before.

All of the sentences were short and direct, without interspersed clauses, a style typical of English but uncommon in Portuguese writing, reported expresso.pt on Friday, November 3.

Most of the students admitted to using ChatGPT

The specialist in forensic linguistics quickly realised that the academic articles ‘were not written by humans’ and had in fact been generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The case dates back to the last academic year the news outlet explained.

Despite discussing the use of ChatGPT with his students, and agreeing with them that the tool could be used, its use for the execution of a full paper was not permitted.

After confronting the students about the incident, most of them admitted to Silva that they had used the program to do their work.

How are educational facilities dealing with the use of ChatGPT?

ChatGPT use has opened a debate around the world due to the risks and possibility of its misuse. Several schools and other educational establishments have adopted tools that allow the program’s trends to be detected.

Some institutions in Portugal have been exploring the world of ChatGPT as they understand that it is impossible to stop its use.

They believe that the objective is to understand how the program can be used to facilitate a student’s study without removing the effort and need for real work and research, as reported by cmjornal.pt.