Turnitin had proposed potential changes to their End User Licence Agreement (EULA) which could mean that student essays submitted through Turnitin could be used to train AI. These proposed changes have now been taken off their website.
Following the mass backlash from university student unions and university statements alike, Turnitin are now redrafting the new End User Licence Agreement (EULA) and are pushing back the release of the agreement until September 2027.
100 student reps, including five of Dundee’s DUSA Exec, have signed an open letter calling for Turnitin to rescind their potential rollout of using student assignment data to train AI.
The members of DUSA who signed the open letter are President Tom Christison, Vice-President Community Sean Kwok, VP Representation Chethan Gollahalli, VP Student Wellbeing Ruby Mugisha, and VP Academia Ramya Shiva.
Universities themselves, including Aberdeen University, Imperial College London, and Loughborough University have also made public statements regarding the proposed changes, and Southampton University confirmed they will be moving away from using Turnitin products after the 2026/27 academic year.
Turnitin currently states on their own website, “If you do not have Turnitin Originality with AI detection enabled, your current student data is not used for training our classifier AI model. If you do have Turnitin Originality with AI detection enabled, your current student data is anonymized and may be used to train our classifier AI model.”
Currently, the University of Dundee has not enabled Turnitin Originality with AI detection.
Dundee’s use of Turnitin’s products for students includes the Originality Checker and (New) Classic Feedback Studio as of 2026/27. The university also has Turnitin Draft Coach, which is an add-on for students on Microsoft Word or Google Docs with a grammar checker and similarity score.
A statement from Dundee University to all students reads,
“The University takes student data protection, consent, and intellectual property very seriously. Turnitin has officially confirmed that no student or staff data is used to develop generative AI models, with no plans to use student submissions in this way.
Because the University of Dundee uses Turnitin solely for standard similarity detection, student work remains entirely protected under our current setup.
The University shares DUSA’s firm position that students own their academic work and that it must not be co-opted for commercial AI training without explicit, informed consent.”