Essays and other submissions are a labour of love and dedication. They are produced through extended, caffeine-fuelled nights spent hunched over a laptop or desktop computer, surrounded by countless open tabs and notebooks, while questioning every life choice one has ever made. The tears, breakdowns, breakthroughs, and revelations ultimately contribute to success. You submit your work knowing that you have invested your heart and soul in it, together with your passion, honesty, and effort. 

Under Turnitin's new terms of service, they use all that work and stress without our permission to feed their A.I. system, with no option to opt out.

Our time spent with Turnitin needs to come to an end. A program once used to catch plagiarism is now going to steal our intellectual property in a world that is rapidly becoming one in which we own nothing, not even our own voice. 

Recently, the BBC reported that ongoing A.I. optimisation has contributed to the disappearance of 50% of graduate jobs. This has led me, along with many others, to ask: what will become of our livelihoods? What will become of our thoughts, opinions, and feelings? What will become of the originality and uniqueness of the human voice? 

With university widely regarded by many across the world as a conventional route to improved employment opportunities, many students agree that these institutions have a central role in supporting the career paths of their future alumni. More importantly, universities could not survive without the substantial annual fees paid by their students, which have increased in recent years. Therefore, UK universities such as the University of Aberdeen should consider discontinuing the use of Turnitin to support and encourage the students on whom they depend.

Universities should uphold the same standards of academic integrity that they expect from their students. Using academic assignments to advance LLMs undermines these principles and damages the reputation of UK higher education as an institution committed to upholding them. The implications of this practice are extensive. Students' intellectual property, reflecting countless hours of labour, research, and creativity, could be assimilated into vast data sets without their explicit consent. Such practices not only erode student trust but also exploit intellectual endeavours for corporate gain.

Stop this A.I slop.

EDIT:

Hello again. I just wanted to come on here to say a huge thank you for all the support on this petition!  Any UoA students and beyond, please feel free to create an email template, send it to your school's faculty, and keep spreading the word. Just because Turnitin has postponed its plans doesn't mean our work and our peers' work are safe. Thanks again!