Checkers Cheat

[Anthony]

Afterthese conversations, I was able to confirm the business relationship between Chegg and Copyleaks from a third person - someone with knowledge of the dynamics. He did not know anything about QuillBot or Course Hero, but as you will see, he did not need to.

With three sources and an unsolicited rumor, I asked Copyleaks directly, on the record, whether they had business relations with two of the largest and most insidious cheating companies. I relayed, essentially, what the first two employees told me.

UpGrad needed a plagiarism detection solution to integrate with their custom-made online learning platform. So they added Copyleaks to their environment, allowing students to receive a similarity report with every assignment they submitted. Now, they are alerted if the similarity percentage is too high and can update their assignment accordingly.

QuillBot is an AI-powered paraphrase engine that has a very high use case for rewriting material specifically to avoid plagiarism detection or AI text detection. And, it turns out, QuillBot also offers a plagiarism detector so students can check their work for plagiarism before they turn it in and, naturally, adjust anything that may trigger a misconduct review - for a fee, of course.

the overall number of detections was 262 in the 2019/20 academic year. That included 226 cases of plagiarism. A further nine were second offences and two were third offences. Direct cheating in exams was responsible for 18 incidents, with three further online exam offences.

We, so far, have had a handful of cases where an AI tool was used and the way it was the instructor suspected of something, called up the student, talked to the student because they knew the student and in that conversation, the student admitted to having used it.

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In chatting with one of the Copyleaks folks behind their table, I made a comment about the threat that companies such as Chegg and QuillBot represent to academic honesty and integrity. Oddly, the person seemed eager to correct me. Chegg, they said, was a partner with Copyleaks and that Copyleaks was also a technology provider to QuillBot. They said something like \u2018our technology powers QuillBot.\u2019

Copyleaks, if you don\u2019t know it, holds itself out as an academic integrity company. They present themselves as the kind of enterprise you\u2019d expect is helping to protect students and schools from cheating providers such as Chegg and QuillBot - not taking money from them.

Then, a few days after the conference, I happened to be on the phone with an executive of Copyleaks - a person near the very top of their leadership pyramid. In that conversation too, I mentioned Chegg. In response, the executive also told me Copyleaks had a partnership with Chegg. The executive said Chegg was one of their biggest clients, earning the company more than a million dollars a year. I don\u2019t remember if this executive mentioned QuillBot.

I\u2019m not identifying either of these people because, though they both knew or could easily have known that I am an education writer, neither conversation was a formal interview. I think people should assume they\u2019re on the record when speaking with a reporter, unless other terms are set beforehand. But still, since it was not an official, on-the-record conversation, I\u2019m keeping their names out of it.

Then, as the universe works sometimes, just days after that, I was on the phone with someone else - someone completely unaffiliated with any of these companies - and he asked me if I\u2019d heard that Copyleaks was working with Chegg.

The company could have said it was not true, that I had bad information. They could have simply said, \u2018no, we have no business relationships with Chegg or Course Hero or QuillBot.\u2019 Or they could have said, \u2018yes, but it\u2019s not how it looks, let us explain.\u2019

They did not have to do the interview. With the \u201Ccannot disclose\u201D answer, they said everything. All of which allows me to say, with confidence - Copyleaks is in business with Chegg and Course Hero/Learneo/QuillBot.

Moodle, the world\u2019s most customizable and trusted eLearning solution that empowers educators to improve our world, and Copyleaks, the leading AI-based text analysis platform that identifies potential plagiarism and the presence of AI content, verifies authenticity and ownership, and inspires error-free writing, today announced a partnership that brings comprehensive content integrity to Moodle\u2019s worldwide users.

Also on their site, Copyleaks shares a deal with an outfit called \u201CUpGrad\u201D which is described as an \u201CE-Learning & Online Degree Platform.\u201D What\u2019s interesting about the UpGrad deal is how it\u2019s described on the Copyleaks website:

Copyleaks has a system that alerts students if they\u2019re plagiarizing too much so they can fix it? Literally, if what they said is true, they alert students \u201Cif the similarity percentage is too high\u201D so they \u201Ccan update their assignment accordingly.\u201D

Anyway, since the company isn\u2019t talking, the nature of the relationship between Chegg and Copyleaks is not known. But the most logical connection is probably something similar to the UpGrad deal, wherein Copyleaks pre-checks the homework and test answers that Chegg sells to students.

That\u2019s just a guess. But it makes sense that Chegg would want to be sure that the answers its paid cheaters are delivering aren\u2019t cut and pasted from some existing source. That is to say, that Chegg\u2019s answers won\u2019t be flagged by existing plagiarism software. Chegg, it seems to me, cannot charge students for answers if the work is going to be flagged as plagiarism. If nothing else, Chegg work has to be unplagiarized, or least be unplagiarized enough so as to not trigger detection systems.

If I\u2019m right, then Copyleaks is being paid to help cheaters avoid plagiarism detection, while selling plagiarism detection to schools. They are quite possibly being paid to help cheaters bypass their own detection systems - systems paid for by schools.

And because QuillBot offers a plagiarism detector, we don\u2019t need to speculate about whether there is a business relationship between QuillBot and Copyleaks - QuillBot says there is. Right there in the FAQ, QuillBot says:

It\u2019s pretty clear that helping students pre-check cheating material to avoid detection is what Copyleaks does - whether that material originates with Chegg or QuillBot or anywhere else. That\u2019s how they safeguard original and authentic work, apparently. And again, all while charging schools to check the work they\u2019ve already helped students \u201Cclean up.\u201D

To be as clear as I know how to be - it\u2019s impossible to say you\u2019re an academic integrity company, to sell academic security services to schools, and do business with cheating providers. It\u2019s as simple as that.

I know, I\u2019m repeating. But you cannot \u201Cuphold academic integrity\u201D if you\u2019re cashing checks from Chegg or QuillBot and helping students beat plagiarism detectors. Cannot be done. A quick reminder, both Chegg and Course Hero/QuillBot refuse to cooperate with academic integrity inquires from teachers or schools.

That Copyleaks is in bed with anti-integrity companies while selling cheating detection products, that\u2019s quite something. I don\u2019t know what else to call it. It\u2019s like a bank security guard being paid by Butch Cassidy. Banks would be right to have questions. If I had a bank, I would not even let them in the front door, let alone pay them to supposedly guard anything whatsoever.

What I care more about are the teachers, schools and other education providers who probably think they\u2019re paying for an academic integrity solution, with integrity - or at least one that isn\u2019t doing side deals with the very companies and services that they\u2019re spending time and money to contain.

According to reporting in the Belfast Telegraph (subscription required), cases of cheating have \u201Csoared\u201D at Northern Ireland universities over the past three years. At the nation\u2019s two main universities, the reporting found cases of academic misconduct totaled 2,223 over those three years.

A spokesperson for students blamed the increase on \u201Cpressure\u201D being put on students and the increasing ability of schools to find misconduct. I\u2019m not sure about the first part but the second part does not wash.

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