Leiden University uses the Turnitin tool to assess assignments, papers and theses and to check them for plagiarism. According to the university website, the programme developed by the US tech company ‘helps detect plagiarism by comparing submitted work against a database of academic sources, websites and previously submitted theses’. It highlights ‘similarities so that you can see which parts of a submitted work may have been plagiarised’. 

The app integrated into Brightspace is not suitable for detecting texts written with generative AI, but can ‘be helpful in checking sources generated’ by, for example, ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude. 

Turnitin has plans to increase its focus on AI, and this is causing concern, as became apparent on Monday during the Law School Council meeting. ‘In UK higher education, there is a great deal of controversy surrounding the changes to Turnitin’s user agreement’, said Luka Laitadze of student party LSP. ‘The company will be able to use papers and theses uploaded by students to train and improve its own AI model.’

SELLING DATA

It is also possible that this data could be sold to other parties, said Laitadze. ‘Students are rightly concerned that their work could be used without consent and turn up as a response to some random prompt. That’s not supposed to happen.’

British universities are also grappling with this issue, the BBC reported recently. The University of Southampton has even decided to phase out the app.

Niels van de Ven, head of education and student affairs at the Law School, explained that Leiden University obtains its Turnitin licence via SURF, an ICT cooperative comprising over 120 Dutch education and research institutions. ‘Under the current agreement, Turnitin is not permitted to use students’ work for AI training. However, the company does indeed plan to make this possible, and the current agreement will, of course, expire at some point. In the negotiations for renewal, the university and SURF are pushing hard to ensure that we can continue to use the system under the current terms. We don’t want to give permission for AI training.’

‘It’s good to hear that the university is working on this’, said Laitadze. According to him, there will be more time to respond to Turnitin’s plans. ‘Initially, the company wanted to amend the user agreement as early as January 2027, but this has been postponed until 1 September.’