Turnitin has faced widespread backlash after proposing a change to their user agreement which would mean students’ work can be used to train AI models.
Turnitin, the software used by universities to check students’ work for plagiarism and AI-generated content, announced changes to its End User License Agreement (EULA), which would give the company greater rights to use students’ academic work to train and improve its AI tools.
The proposals have raised concerns among students and universities over the use of academic work in relation to consent and intellectual property once it is submitted to the third-party platform.
The University of Aberdeen has responded to the concerns in a joint email with the Students’ Union. A spokesperson said, “In our contract with Turnitin we have Terms and Conditions that ensure your data is protected and which take precedence over any EULA provided by Turnitin.
“We can confirm that no student data has been used by Turnitin to develop or train any generative AI models or large language models (LLMs),” they added.
Turnitin has since postponed the proposed changes following discussions with universities and sector bodies. The company confirmed that there will be no EULA updates during the 2026-27 academic year, although it has indicated that it intends to revisit the changes in the future.
The University of Aberdeen has welcomed the company’s U-turn following the backlash.
The University of Southampton was the first university to announce that it will not renew its contract with Turnitin beyond the 2026-27 academic year, and has begun phasing out the software while exploring alternatives.
The university said it has “a responsibility to protect the data, intellectual property, and academic work” of its students and the University.
The University of Sussex followed suit, announcing that it will no longer use Turnitin for any mandatory assessments shortly after the changes were announced.
Jay Lynch, Education & Employability Officer for Sussex Students’ Union, told The Gaudie: “It exposes an attitude to students’ written work as fodder for training artificial intelligence.”
Other Scottish universities’ student Unions have also challenged the proposals.
Emily Bannister, the University of St Andrews Students’ Association President of Education, wrote to Chris Caren, Chief Executive Officer of Turnitin, over the proposed changes.
Bannister described the proposals as a “fundamental challenge” to academic integrity. She told The Gaudie: “Their proposal represents a systematic harvesting of student effort to fuel technologies over which students have little control or ownership.
“The company will transform students’ intellectual labour into a resource for commercial technologies rather than a product of learning and scholarship.”
The Executive Team at Dundee University Students’ Association (DUSA Exec) have called on the University of Dundee to comment on the issue. They said they are seeking a “clear written position” from the University on the use and protection of students’ work submitted through Turnitin.
Sean Kwok, Vice President of Community for DUSA, told The Gaudie: “I’ve heard a lot of student concern about having their work used to train AI. We in the Exec are awaiting a written response from our university regarding these concerns for Turnitin.”
