Meet Annie Chechitelli, Chief Product Officer at Plagiarism Detector Tool: Turnitin

Tell us about Turnitin

Turnitin is an edtech company that supports global education and research through academic transparency. Our goal is to support educators, facilitate academic integrity, and ensure new technologies – like our AI writing detection feature – help students do their best, original work.

What do you think makes this company unique?

We’ve been a trusted partner to educational institutions for more than 25 years, and our mission to uphold academic integrity has always remained our highest priority. Our products are among the most widely used tools for verifying authenticity and original work across 21,000 institutions, 71 million students, and 185 countries.

Some of our employees come from an education background themselves. You can’t support academic leaders without guidance from professionals that have been in their shoes. In order to ensure students do their best, original work, our products must be pedagogically sound. We are committed to investing in our relationships with the educational community to ensure our products align with their needs.

We regularly publish new resources and guides on our website for educators, administrators and students. We aren’t just another edtech company; we’re a company that has directly served academic leaders in all aspects for over a quarter of a century.

How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?

The Turnitin engineering team began working on its AI portfolio in 2014 and in 2020 – two years prior to the launch of ChatGPT 3.5 – began research and development on generative AI writing detection capabilities. Then, within months of ChatGPT’s launch, Turnitin launched its own AI writing detection feature to preserve academic integrity.

We celebrated the one year anniversary of the Turnitin AI product launch in April 2024. During that time, over 200 million papers were reviewed on our platform. As of March 21, 2024, Turnitin data shows that of the over 200 million papers reviewed, over 22 million (approximately 11% of over 200 million) have at least 20% AI writing present and over six million (approximately 3% of over 200 million) have at least 80% AI writing present.

As a trusted education partner, we’re helping our customers adapt to the shifting landscape. Our support for educators goes beyond AI writing detection. If we focus only on AI detection, we are missing vital puzzle pieces that are key to academic integrity, success, and development in the classroom and the lecture hall.

What can we hope to see from Turnitin in the future?

AI technology itself is not only constantly evolving and changing the way we all work, learn, and live. With the emergence of generative AI, detection alone simply won’t cut it.

A student’s hard work should not be judged solely on a single score. That’s why we are building a new solution that provides a “proof of process” – meaning educators will have access to granular data on the draft process, time spent on the assignment, typing patterns, and the copy and paste history. The solution will be available in customers’ existing Turnitin workflows. Educators with these insights can empower students to ethically use AI tools for research and writing, preparing them for future careers that will require a robust understanding of appropriate applications for this technology.