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AI writing detection update from Turnitin's Chief Product Officer
Annie Chechitelli, Turnitin, 2023
Read the originalRead on October 17, 2026
- What it is
- A blog post dated 23 May 2023 in which Turnitin's chief product officer explains changes to its AI writing indicator, including an asterisk for scores under 20 percent and a higher minimum document length. It also gives the share of submissions reporting high AI writing.
- How much weight it carries
- Written by the vendor about its own product, so it is the company's account and not independent testing. It describes the detector at one date in 2023, and the company says it is still testing the cause of the low-score problem.
Facts taken from this source
- As of 14 May 2023, Turnitin reported that 9.6% of the 38.5 million submissions it had processed for AI writing reported over 20% AI writing.
“out of the 38.5 million submissions we have processed for AI writing, 9.6% report over 20% of AI writing” (Blog post, 23 May 2023, the section answering how much AI writing is seen)
- Turnitin raised the minimum length of a document its AI writing detector will evaluate from 150 words to 300 words.
“increasing the minimum word requirement from 150 to 300 words in order for a document to be evaluated by our AI writing detector” (Blog post, 23 May 2023)
- Turnitin says that in documents where its AI writing detector finds less than 20% AI writing, there is a higher incidence of false positives.
“in cases where we detect less than 20% of AI writing in a document, there is a higher incidence of false positives” (Blog post, 23 May 2023)