Can Canvas detect ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is all the rage these days. This tool has brought AI to the fingertips of the masses, letting them use ChatGPT with all kinds of creative prompts. People have explored it to write resumes and even code. So if you think students would be using ChatGPT to write essays and complete their assignments on Canvas, then you are absolutely correct, as they are already doing so. But can Canvas detect ChatGPT? Can the learning management system distinguish real user content written by students from AI-generated content? We answer this question and more in this article.

Can Canvas tell if you use ChatGPT?

No, Canvas cannot detect if you are using ChatGPT, but your teacher can.

As a learning management system, Canvas does not detect AI by itself yet. However, there are partner plugins that claim to detect AI content. Even so, there is no real way to completely and accurately distinguish between AI content and real user content all the time.

AI content checkers rely on a variety of techniques to detect if AI wrote the content or not, but none of these methods are fool-proof. There is bound to be some level of false positive that these content checkers return. If you notice, the content checker will use a percentage score as the result of an AI check. This percentage score usually indicates the tool’s confidence level and the mere probability of AI being used to generate the content.

As a result, no AI content checker can reliably ascertain if something was generated through AI. They can usually point out AI content most of the time, but none can claim a 100% accurate result all the time.

While Canvas or AI content checkers cannot accurately detect AI writing, chances are that your school teacher can. Your teacher is likely familiar with your style of writing, which is likely to be very different from how AI writes content on topics. Further, your teacher may be familiar with how ChatGPT sounds in its writing, and once you’ve seen enough examples, you can get good at sniffing AI content. With these cues combined, plus an AI content checker, a teacher can reasonably assume whether a student has used ChatGPT for their assignment or not.

Can Canvas detect AI writing?

No, Canvas cannot detect AI writing by itself. Some partner plugins claim to detect AI writing, but none can guarantee a 100% detection rate and zero false positives. Most plugins promise AI detection to a “reasonable degree,” but it is debatable how far you can trust them with even one false positive case. After all, the test could decide the academic fate of hundreds and thousands of students.

Consequently, we advise against depending on Canvas and other tools that claim to identify AI content completely and accurately. Due to the nature of AI-generated content, there is no way to be correct about AI content detection all the time.

However, note that humans can spot AI-generated content better than online tools that claim to do so. As humans, we look at different parameters for making that assessment, like the history and style of written content, the turnaround time, the relative difficulty that others in the same peer group face, and so on. If someone has used AI, their content usually appears to be pretty different from their past assignments, making it fairly evident that AI’s help was taken for the exam.

To students, we advise not using ChatGPT or other AI tools in Canvas, as you can and will be easily caught and your teacher likely knows you better than AI does.

To teachers, we advise not relying entirely on an AI-checking tool to check for AI content within your student’s assignments. You can use them alongside other cues like common sense but do not wholly rely on the assessment of an AI checking tool to adjudge that a student has used ChatGPT or other AI tools.

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