On August 29, London Met Uni stated in an email to partners: “We are aware that artificial intelligence technology has been used to generate personal statements (personal statements). Please note that the university does not Accept any personal statement generated by artificial intelligence. We strongly recommend that you use zerogpt to check whether the personal statement was generated by artificial intelligence.
This may be the first UK university to explicitly reject the use of AI technology to generate personal statements.
(London Met Uni official website)
The personal statement is a personal introduction essay submitted when applying to overseas universities . It plays a pivotal role in university applications . It is an important material for applicants to present themselves and attract the attention of the admissions committee .
Therefore, overseas universities are paying close attention to the impact of AI generation technology on university applications.
Georgia Tech, a prestigious school in the United States , also stated that it is strictly prohibited to directly use AI to generate content in personal statements, but students are encouraged to use AI to help write.
Georgia Tech writes on its website: “ Just as you should not directly plagiarize content from other sources, you should not directly copy and paste assignment writing content from any artificial intelligence platform or submit content that is not yours when writing your personal statement. Original content. However, AI tools can provide you with inspiration during the creative process , help you choose more appropriate vocabulary and sentence structure , and make your work more organized and logical . Ultimately, what colleges want to see is the application A unique and valuable personal statement .”
(Georgia Tech official website)
At the same time, the British university application system UCAS has also given guidance on whether AI can be used in personal statements.
UCAS stated that using artificial intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT, to generate all or most of the PS content and submitting it as your own documents may be considered by universities to be fraud , which will affect your chances of admission .
Notably, after submitting an application, applicants must now declare that their personal statement has not been copied or obtained from other sources, including artificial intelligence software.
(UCAS official website)
However, UCAS also agrees that artificial intelligence tools can help applicants in their PS writing in the following three aspects .
(UCAS official website)
So now comes the problem
How to tell whether an article is generated by AI or written by yourself?
At present, overseas universities mainly use the following methods to determine whether a document is generated by AI.
1. Third-party AI detection tools
For example, London Metropolitan University gave zerogpt, a ChatGPT writing detection tool developed by a computer science student at Princeton University in the United States. It identifies artificial intelligence-generated text by measuring the complexity of ideas and the diversity of sentence structures. It is believed that the tool The recognition ability of English text is stronger than that of Chinese text. There are many similar tools on the market, and overseas universities may use these tools for testing.
2. Plagiarism checking tool
For example, UCAS has a Verification Team responsible for monitoring fraud in applications and will conduct "duplication checks" on personal statements . During this process, artificial intelligence-generated text will be screened and identified.
3. Manual identification
What people often overlook is that even without the help of tools, these experienced admissions teachers who "mark countless papers" every year can feel who uses artificial intelligence based on their experience and sense of language . After all, they know a typical essay very well. What does it look like.
However, technical means are only part of the solution. More importantly, applicants and educational institutions should work together to maintain the authenticity and integrity of the application .