Just a year ago, AI-generated content seemed easy to spot, but now, as one Pennsylvania teaching assistant revealed, AI can even produce convincing handwritten homework. Under the username Swaggyaggy26, the TA posted images of her student’s work on r/isthisAI and remarked, “It looks eerily perfect for handwriting.” On top of that, she added that there wasn’t enough work on the papers to convince her that a human solved the problems.
Still, Swaggy didn’t want to jump to conclusions yet and ran the assignment through SynthID, which apparently claimed it wasn’t AI. This was the second suspiciously perfect homework this student turned in, with even more flawless handwriting than the first. Swaggy wasn’t convinced, and Reddit wasn’t either: this student wasn’t fooling anyone.
“Maybe ask them to show you how they draw so perfectly cause youre impressed, if they can’t or have excuses then ask if they actually drew it,” suggested a commenter. “All their 0’s are exactly the same, down to the little penbump at the top,” added another.
The Student Couldn’t Give the Teaching Assistant a Physical Copy of the Work
In response to the first comment, Swaggy said she emailed the student asking for the actual papers. “If they could produce the physical copy, then they got the points. Guess who never showed up,” she remarked.
Another Redditor pointed out how the 2s on the assignment had an oddly placed comma after them, which didn’t make sense. Swaggy followed up in a separate comment how students who use digital tools for writing, like apps on their iPads or tablets, still show variation and signs that their work was handwritten. This post’s images are disturbingly uniform in the penmanship shown.
While OP says SynthID didn’t detect any signs of AI use in the assignment, one commenter revealed the solution. “Gemini is only able to detect a SynthID watermark from Google’s AI models,” they explain. However, OpenAI was able to detect AI generation without issue.
In the end, unfortunately for the student, they didn’t get away with having AI do their homework for them. “It’s definitely a zero now that multiple people confirmed it’s AI,” Swaggy concluded.
