The research bears out the pessimism. In the past two years, there have been dramatic increases in the numbers of students using generative AI to do their work. In the UK, at university level, the number of students using AI for assessments went up from 53 per cent in 2024 to 88 per cent in 2025. Among 13- to 18-year-olds generative AI use went from 37 per cent in 2023 to 77 per cent in 2024.
Not only that, but you can’t spot its use: AI detectors don’t work. They miss real plagiarism and accuse human work of being plagiarised.
In short, the growing and undetectable use of generative AI poses a huge threat to the integrity of assessments, and by extension to the integrity of education.
In the worst-case scenario, which may already be here, we end up with a kabuki dance where students pretend to write essays and teachers pretend to mark them.
