By Miles Klee
Publication Date: 2025-12-17 19:20:00
As the fall semester came to a close, Andrew Heiss, an assistant professor in the Department of Public Management and Policy at Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, was reviewing his students’ coursework when he noticed something concerning.
As is common practice for educators these days, Heiss followed up on quotes in essays to make sure they led to real sources—and weren’t fake references provided by an AI chatbot. Of course, he caught some of his students using generative artificial intelligence to cheat: not only can the bots help write the text, they can also provide supposed evidence when asked to back up claims by tracing findings back to previously published articles. But like lawyers who were caught drafting briefs using AI because a model offered incorrect legal precedent, students can end up with plausible-sounding footnotes that link to academic articles and journals that don’t exist.
That in itself…
