What AI Detector Do Colleges Use? Top 5 Tools Reviewed

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What AI Detector Do Colleges Use? Top 5 Tools Reviewed

Colleges have to use AI detectors to maintain academic integrity. We review five reliable tools that help universities identify AI-written content across essays, assignments, and applications.

Written by

Viktoriia Y.

Published on

Sep 12, 2025

Table of contents

1. StudyPro
2. Originality.ai
3. GPTZero
4. Turnitin
5. Copyleaks
Summary

Table of contents

1. StudyPro
2. Originality.ai
3. GPTZero
4. Turnitin
5. Copyleaks
Summary

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Every challenge has a solution, so with the popularity of AI tools like ChatGPT, we have seen the rise of popularity of AI detectors. According to a 2024 BestColleges survey, 51% of students say their schools already use AI detectors to assess assignments. But with essays, research papers, and even application materials at risk of AI misuse, educators are asking: what do colleges use to detect AI effectively?

In this article, we will show you the five most trusted AI detectors in academia today. These tools are used not just to catch misconduct but also to support academic integrity. We’ll break down their accuracy, features, and what makes them reliable in the classroom.

1. StudyPro

StudyPro offers an advanced AI text detector specifically designed for students, professors, and researchers. It’s one of the few AI detectors that colleges use due to its comprehensive and rich functionality.

With the StudyPro detector, colleges can:

Accurate AI content detection across all types of academic writing (98%+);
Detailed, section-by-section reports with refinement suggestions;
Support for essays, research papers, dissertations, and more;
Smart feedback to differentiate human vs. AI tone;
Compatibility with popular language models, including GPT-4, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and LLaMA.

Unlike many tools, StudyPro’s AI detector offers full functionality with no hidden fees, word limits, or scan caps, making it a cost-effective choice for institutions seeking transparent, reliable academic integrity tools.

2. Originality.ai

Originality.ai is a high‑accuracy AI checker that colleges use, and it is famous in academic benchmark studies like RAID and evaluations by the University of Florida. It achieved 97.5% accuracy on ChatGPT-generated texts and 99.3% in detecting AI‑revised human content.

Universities appreciate its main plagiarism detection and AI detection features, such as:

Continuous content monitoring;
Fact‑checking aid integration;
Plagiarism and readability scoring;
Multi-model detection (e.g., GPT‑4, Claude, LLaMA).

Universities increasingly rely on tools designed to precisely determine how to detect AI writing in student submissions.

3. GPTZero

GPTZero is another widely adopted AI detection platform in academic settings, known for its sentence-level analysis and contextual scoring. Designed to differentiate between human and AI-generated text, it uses key linguistic markers such as perplexity and burstiness to assess writing authenticity. In benchmark studies, GPTZero achieved 95–99% accuracy in classifying fully human or fully AI-written texts, and 89–93% on mixed-origin samples.

Its features include:

Sentence-by-sentence AI probability breakdowns;
Context-aware detection across disciplines;
Model-specific tuning (e.g., ChatGPT, GPT-4);
Clear explanations for flagged segments.

4. Turnitin

Turnitin remains one of the most commonly integrated AI detection systems in educational institutions, thanks to its seamless compatibility with plagiarism tools and LMS platforms. It reports up to 98% accuracy in AI detection with a claimed false positive rate under 1% in controlled environments. However, independent research highlights a ±15% margin of error, indicating potential variability in real-world use.

Key features include:

Integration with plagiarism detection systems;
AI-generated content scoring in originality reports;
Institutional-level deployment across platforms;
The user interface is optimized for faculty use but complex for students.

Despite its popularity, Turnitin has limitations when it comes to paraphrased or adversarial AI content. In one study, it flagged 91% of GPT‑4 submissions as AI-written but failed to detect nearly half of the actual AI-generated sections.

These gaps highlight the challenges even top tools face when it comes to detecting AI writing with consistent accuracy.

5. Copyleaks

Copyleaks is a well-known AI and plagiarism detection platform trusted by many universities worldwide. According to independent evaluations, it achieves up to 99.12% AI detection accuracy.

It can be recognized by these features:

Section-by-section AI probability scoring;
Multilingual detection across 30+ languages;
Integration with LMS platforms and Google Classroom;
Visual similarity maps and heatmaps for faculty review.

For a deeper understanding of how advanced models perform, check out our AI Detection FAQ, which explains how these systems detect AI-generated content in texts by both native and non-native speakers with false positive rates under 1%.

Summary

What AI detector do colleges use for students? With the rise of AI-generated writing, academic institutions now turn to advanced AI assistance in writing tools not only to empower learning but to safeguard integrity.

Tools like Turnitin, Copyleaks, GPTZero, and Originality.ai offer different levels of accuracy, integration, and analysis. While these platforms provide value in identifying potential misuse of AI in essays and research, they also raise concerns about transparency and fairness, especially when false positives can impact student records and reputations.

StudyPro is one such tool that meets this demand. Tailored for students, professors, and researchers, it combines a high-accuracy AI detector, detailed analysis, and full compatibility with major LLMs like GPT-4, Claude, and Gemini. It's all-in-one academic suite makes it a trusted resource in modern classrooms.

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Frequently asked questions

College admissions offices rely on AI detectors used by colleges to identify whether application materials, such as essays, have been created with AI-generated text or have been generated by tools like ChatGPT. To detect whether text is machine-written, some institutions use tools like StudyPro, GPTZero, Turnitin’s detector, or integrated systems within admissions software.

For obvious reasons, there is no one best AI detection software, but the options for the tools to detect AI content are huge. The ones showing high accuracy are StudyPro, GPT Zero, Copyleaks, and Turnitin. In the long run, the best AI detector for university use depends on the institution’s goals, whether detecting AI-generated content in admissions, coursework, or exams, and how it balances accuracy, student fairness, and academic integrity.

Yes, colleges use AI detectors to maintain academic integrity. According to a 2024 BestColleges survey, 51% of college students reported that their schools had implemented AI detection tools in some form. Turnitin’s detector alone is used by over 10,000 academic institutions globally.

Sources:

Quinn, B. (2023, January 9). Guides: Artificial Intelligence Tools for Detection, Research and Writing: AI Detection. Guides.library.ttu.edu. https://guides.library.ttu.edu/artificialintelligencetools/detection
University of Reading. (2023). Academic integrity and generative AI tools (Version 1.0, November 2023). Centre for Quality Support and Development. https://www.reading.ac.uk/cqsd/-/media/project/functions/cqsd/documents/ade/academic-integrity-and-genai.pdf?la=en&hash=F3F3BA4DD570087E3BF6EB37C76667D8
Blommerde, T., Bright, W., Musgrave, E., Mitchell, R., & Heselton, R. (2024). AI detectors in universities: Time to turn them off and embrace AI for enhanced learning. Northumbria University. [PDF]. Retrieved from https://researchportal.northumbria.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/180155670/Ed-Devs-25.4DEC2024.pdf

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