90% of surveyed students used AI for writing the final semester paper. Is the tendency growing?
ADDLESTONE, GB / ACCESS Newswire / January 27, 2026 / Only one out of ten students who participated in the survey did not use ChatGPT for their final semester paper. Are plagiarism and AI misuse getting out of control? PlagiarismCheck.org spoke to teachers and students and compared statistical numbers over the years 2020-2025 to analyze the tendency.
According to the research, 10-25% is the average of the AI-generated content detected in the submitted texts in 2025 by the TraceGPT checker. In 2024, the number was higher, reaching 16,1-26,1%.
However, according to the teachers, the number of students relying on chatbots is growing. "At least 50% of grade 9 students and about 20% of the grade 10 students use AI heavily, then try to edit it to pass checkers, even with the warnings of a loss of 20% of the mark," says Ann Rayan after checking the final papers.
As for the plagiarism, the surveyed college educators found a significant improvement in students' papers after conducting the Originality and Writing Ethics workshop. Only 15% of the 2025 final works contained plagiarism as opposed to 80% before the class. Poor paraphrasing is named the number one reason for plagiarism occurrence in students' papers.
An average percentage of plagiarism found by PlagiarismCheck.org in submitted papers in 2025 was 8-21%. To compare, in 2024, this number ranged from 11% to 43%, and on average, from 15% to 25% from 2022 to 2023. Copying from each other has become the main plagiarism problem (54-70% of matches in 2025 as opposed to 30-51% in 2020-2022), followed by copying from online sources without proper attribution (20-40% in 2023-2025, compared to 40-65% in 2017-2023).
Plagiarism and AI misuse tendencies are not drastically increasing. However, they change along with the AI models and checkers, shifting the focus from "how much" to "in which way" the students work with the sources and AI chatbots.
About PlagiarismCheck.org
PlagiarismCheck.org is an assistance tool founded in 2011. It is designed to help teachers and students detect and prevent plagiarism and AI misuse, spreading awareness of originality and writing ethics. The toolkit includes a plagiarism checker, an AI detector, authorship verification, a grammar checker, a citation generator, and a grading tool. The instruments can be integrated into any environment, from Learning Management Systems to browsers, making them an intrinsic part of the working and studying process. The mission of the business is to protect academic integrity, help teachers optimise checking routines, and educate students on the importance of authentic writing.
Reach out to us at https://plagiarismcheck.org/ to learn more about our services.
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Feel free to contact us via the form on the website or via email support@plagiarismcheck.org. You can also find us on LinkedIn to learn more.
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Email: support@plagiarismcheck.org
Website: https://plagiarismcheck.org/
SOURCE: PlagiarismCheck.org
View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire:
https://www.accessnewswire.com/newsroom/en/education/plagiarismcheck.org-statistics-are-plagiarism-and-ai-misuse-in-academia-increasing-in-202-1130172
