SOAS University of London is overhauling assessments to fight AI-generated cheating.
Senior economics lecturer Risa Morimoto says AI tools have made cheating harder to detect. Students increasingly submit essays with content pulled from internet sources, skipping class materials entirely.
Morimoto has seen "very similar" essays citing literature she’s never assigned. AI writing detection tools help, but can’t confidently catch misuse. 
She points out rising university fees and part-time jobs push students toward time-saving AI usage.
Morimoto shared her plan to scrap traditional essays in favor of creative tasks starting next year:
"I’ll ask my students to choose a topic and produce a summary of what they learned in the class about it. Second, they’ll create a blog, so they can translate what they’ve understood of the highly technical terms into a more communicable format."
Her goal: tie assessments directly to class content and demand originality harder for AI to mimic.
She added:
"The old assessment model, which involves memorizing facts and regurgitating them in exams, isn’t useful anymore. ChatGPT can easily give you a beautiful summary of information like this. Instead, educators need to help students with soft skills, communication, and out-of-the-box thinking."
SOAS provides AI guidance for students and enforces academic integrity with "robust mechanisms" to investigate misuse, a spokesperson said.
The university is updating policies regularly as AI usage evolves.
