Does ‘AI-watermarking’ mean the party is over for cheating students?
Bianca De Marchi/AAP Image Concerns about students cheating with AI are rife within schools and universities. Some lecturers have even expressed fears students have been “lobotomised by AI” amid reports AI-detection tools are patchy and far from fool-proof. Last week, New South Wales moved to…
Bianca De Marchi/AAP Image Concerns about students cheating with AI are rife within schools and universities. Some lecturers have even expressed fears students have been “lobotomised by AI” amid reports AI-detection tools are patchy and far from fool-proof.
Last week, New South Wales moved to ban take-home assignments for Year 12 to try to stop AI use in assessments. At the same time, a major generative AI system has developed a way to “watermark” whether or not a text is AI.
What Happened
Developer Anthropic, has announced the text output of Claude (one of the five big AI tools) will include a hidden label or watermark indicating the text is AI-generated. Files generated by Claude, including Word and PowerPoint, will also contain an additional watermark.
A 2026 UK survey found 95% of undergraduate students use AI, with 94% using it in their assessments.
A July report from software company Turnitin revealed more than 53% of submissions from Australian uni students run through its system used some form of AI.
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Key Details
Anthropic took this step after signing up to the European Union’s new AI act. The act requires providers of AI systems that create synthetic audio, video, images or text to identify the outputs as AI-generated.
They must also include mechanisms that verify the person completing the assessment is the enrolled student.
Secure tasks can include oral presentations, in-class tasks and supervised practical demonstrations.
It also includes at least one “secure” assessment task in every unit or subject across a degree program.
Why It Matters
Other tech companies, such as OpenAI (which runs ChatGPT), have developed a text watermarking tool, but not rolled it out publicly. The watermarking is not an image superimposed over the text.
This includes assessments that are connected and build upon each other throughout a whole degree, increasing in complexity.
The higher education regulator has also outlined how assessments could change in practice.
What Reports Say
Coverage of the story so far points to:
Continued reporting by The Conversation as more details emerge
