Legislation aimed at eradicating contract cheating has not stopped a proliferation of new low-cost artificial intelligence essay writing services, with universities being urged to work together to target the major platforms that continue to allow these companies to advertise.
Laws passed in recent years in England, Australia and elsewhere that ban businesses from completing assignments on behalf of students – and advertising such services – are often so broadly worded that they can effectively criminalise the likes of ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, a new report from legal experts at UCL concludes.
It finds that, although prosecutions of these large language models are highly unlikely, the laws could also be used to target “AI-assisted” services that claim to be able to do things such as provide real, bone fide references for AI-generated text or rewrite content to avoid AI detectors.
The Digital Services Act that came into force across the European Union in August, and is also being applied in the UK, requires that online advertising archives be made available, explained Michael Veale, associate professor in digital rights and regulation, who co-wrote the report with research assistant Noëlle Gaumann. This has made it easier to understand, for the first time, the breadth of contract cheating services being operated.
