A PROPOSAL which would have allowed Turnitin to use student submissions to train AI models has sparked outrage from student leaders.
This summer, the widely used anti-plagiarism software updated its End User Licence Agreement and made a change which would permit AI services to use content from student submissions.
Not long after updating its policy following pressure from the education sector, Turnitin U-turned. Despite scrapping the plan for now, they say they'll revisit updates next year, sparking condemnation.
The National Union of Students (NUS) said academics and leadership figures must stand up for students to protect their original work, to ensure Turnitin does not reintroduce the policy.
Justine Pedussel, NUS Scotland president, said: “Students put in hundreds of hours into their assignments, undertaking primary research and making original arguments.
"It is outrageous that a mandatory submission platform can change their terms and propose using our hard work to train their AI models.
“This is not what we signed up to, nor do we consent to this. While Turnitin has temporarily paused its changes for now, we need universities and colleges to protect our rights over our work here, and call on leadership and academics to stand with students on this.”
The University of Southampton was the first to come out this week and say it would "immediately" begin phasing out use of the platform, and wouldn't renew its contract beyond next year.
They said: "We have a responsibility to protect the data, intellectual property and academic work of both our students and the university.
"While we understand Turnitin has postponed changes that would have allowed it to use student submissions to train AI services, it has confirmed it still intends to revisit implementing these updates next year.
"As a result, we have decided not to renew our contract beyond the end of the 2026/27 academic year and will begin phasing out the use of this service immediately."
As Turnitin is the most commonly used anti-plagiarism tool used by universities in Scotland, any changes made next year could affect Scottish students.
The universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Heriot-Watt, Napier, Stirling, Abertay, Dundee, West of Scotland, Queen Margaret, Glasgow Caledonian and Robert Gordon were all approached for comment.
A University of Edinburgh spokesperson said: “We take the security and privacy of all our students' data very seriously.
"We will continue to work with Turnitin to ensure they provide the level of privacy and security of student data that we require.”
A spokesperson for Turnitin said: "We recognise the great responsibility that comes with our customers’ trust to protect their data, which we have prioritised for nearly 30 years.
"We acknowledge that the introduction of AI in education raised new questions and concerns about data use and privacy. We are committed to being transparent around AI product design and data use.
"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 anonymised student submissions to improve our detection and assessment tools.
"We train a machine learning classification model for our AI detection tool that identifies likely AI-written text. Classifier models categorise or label existing data, returning a numeric prediction about AI writing.
"They do not write, rewrite, or produce text like generative AI models. We do not train any generative AI models. Further, we do not sell any student data to third parties, including third-party LLMs."
