Check your draft before Turnitin does.
A Turnitin detector alternative: named verdict, sentence scores, free.
50 free scans a day · 2,500 words per scan · not affiliated with Turnitin
The score
What the AI indicator
is — and is not
Most confusion about Turnitin's AI detection is really confusion about which of its numbers you are looking at, who can see them, and how much weight their own maker puts on them.
It is a separate score
The AI indicator is not the similarity score. Similarity measures overlap with existing sources; the AI indicator estimates how much of the document reads as machine-generated — AI generated text from generative AI and similar AI models. A fully AI-written essay is usually original in the plagiarism sense — high AI score, near-zero similarity — and a heavily quoted human written essay can be the reverse. The two numbers answer unrelated questions.
Instructors see it; students usually don't
The indicator appears in the instructor's report view. Students typically cannot see their own AI score before or after submission — which is exactly why students who want to check a draft first end up using an external detector, and why the score often arrives as a surprise.
Low scores are treated as unreliable by Turnitin itself
Turnitin has said that low-percentage results carry a higher risk of false positives, and its report design reflects that — scores in the low range have been marked with an asterisk or not shown at all. A reader who treats a small AI percentage as hard evidence is using the number with more confidence than its own maker does.
It needs enough text, in prose, mostly in English
Turnitin's detection has stated minimums — on the order of a few hundred words of long-form prose — and its strongest coverage is English. Short answers, bullet lists, code, and low-resource languages are outside the conditions the tool was built for, and results there deserve very little weight.
On accuracy: Turnitin has claimed a document-level false-positive rate on the order of one percent, measured on its own test data. Real-world experience was uneven enough that several universities — Vanderbilt most publicly, in 2023 — turned the feature off rather than adjudicate its errors. Neither fact cancels the other. A low average error rate and errors concentrated on particular writers (non-native English speakers above all, per peer-reviewed research on detectors generally) are the same tool seen from two distances.
Second opinion
See how your draft reads
before anyone scores it
Students usually cannot see Turnitin's AI indicator on their own work. Use the checker at the top of this page — a named verdict and a score on every sentence, so a worrying passage is a specific passage, not a mystery percentage. markhuman and Turnitin are different classifiers — our verdict cannot promise theirs.
Canvas, SafeAssign & co
What your LMS
actually checks
A steady stream of students ask whether Canvas or Blackboard 'has AI detection'. The platforms themselves do not — detection is always a tool the institution plugs in. Here is the per-platform answer.
Does Canvas have AI detection?
Not built in. Canvas is a learning management system, not a detector — when an assignment in Canvas produces an AI score, it is because the institution has integrated a third-party tool (most commonly Turnitin) into the submission flow. If your course does not have such an integration enabled, nothing in Canvas itself is scoring your text for AI.
Does SafeAssign detect AI?
SafeAssign, Blackboard's originality tool, is a plagiarism checker: it matches submissions against source databases. It does not analyze whether text is machine-generated. An institution using Blackboard gets AI detection only by adding a separate tool for it.
Does Blackboard detect AI?
Same answer as Canvas: the platform itself does not detect AI writing. Detection arrives via integrations the institution chooses to enable. Whether your submissions are AI-checked is a question about your school's configuration, not about Blackboard.
Does Google Classroom detect AI?
Google Classroom's originality reports compare work against web sources and other student submissions — plagiarism, not AI detection. As with the other platforms, any AI score in a Classroom workflow is a third-party tool an instructor has layered on top.
The practical takeaway: whether your work is AI-checked is decided by your institution's integrations, not by which LMS it runs. If it matters to you, the syllabus or the instructor is the authoritative source — and asking is allowed.
Where we stand
We compete with Turnitin. Here is how this page stays fair
We compete with Turnitin, so read this page knowing that. What we have done to keep it fair: every claim about Turnitin's product is either public fact or Turnitin's own statement, attributed as such; we assert nothing about their internals; and we publish no accuracy comparison, because no independent study we could cite covers both tools. No detector — theirs or ours — proves authorship. If this page helps you understand the report in front of you, it has done its job.
If you are choosing a detector rather than decoding a report, the Turnitin alternative page makes the comparison case, and the AI detector page spells out what our own report can and cannot tell you.
The question
Does Turnitin check for AI? What that actually means
Yes. Does Turnitin check for AI? It does, if your institution has the AI writing indicator enabled. Since April 2023 Turnitin has shipped that indicator next to the similarity score. It is Turnitin's own classifier, not GPTZero or Copyleaks. Instructors usually see it; students usually do not.
Students writing with AI tools such as ChatGPT often confuse two numbers. Similarity is overlap with sources. The AI indicator estimates how much of the submission reads as AI generated text from generative AI and other AI models. A fully machine-written essay can score near-zero similarity. A heavily quoted human written essay can do the reverse.
An AI writing tool and an AI paraphrase pass both change the texture Turnitin is trying to read. Turnitin claims coverage of paraphrased AI text. Every vendor in this category trains on that case, including us. It remains the hardest case. Assume partial coverage that moves as models update.
This page is educational, not a partnership. We build a competing detector. We do not claim Turnitin's internals, and we do not publish a head-to-head accuracy table. If you want a second read on a draft before anyone else scores it, the scanner on this page is free — a named verdict, every sentence scored. Our verdict cannot promise theirs.
FAQ
Does Turnitin check for AI? Common questions
Whether it checks for AI, what engine it runs, what the score means, and what to do when it is wrong about you.
Does Turnitin check for AI?
Yes — if your institution has the AI writing indicator enabled. Since April 2023 Turnitin has shipped that indicator alongside its similarity report. It estimates what portion of a submission reads as AI generated text, including — by Turnitin's own account — AI text that has been paraphrased. Whether you encounter it depends on your school: some use it, and some well-known universities have deliberately disabled it over false-positive concerns.
What AI detector does Turnitin use?
Its own. Turnitin built its detection in-house rather than licensing GPTZero, Copyleaks, or any other third-party engine — so its results will not match those tools, and comparing a Turnitin score against another detector's score is comparing two different classifiers with different training data and thresholds. Disagreement between them is normal, not evidence of a malfunction.
How does Turnitin detect AI?
Turnitin describes its detector as a machine-learning classifier: it segments a submission and scores how strongly the writing's statistical patterns resemble model-generated text, then aggregates that into the percentage instructors see. That is the same fundamental approach as other serious detectors, with the same fundamental limits — it reads style, not history, so it estimates rather than proves.
How accurate is Turnitin's AI detection?
Turnitin has claimed a low false-positive rate — figures on the order of one percent at the document level, measured on its own test data. Independent experience has been messier: enough false positives surfaced in practice that several universities, most publicly Vanderbilt in 2023, disabled the feature entirely. Turnitin's own guidance says the score should not be the sole basis for an academic-integrity decision. Both things can be true: a low error rate at scale, and errors concentrated on particular writers — non-native English speakers and highly uniform stylists — where they do real damage.
What does the Turnitin AI score actually mean?
It is the tool's estimate of the share of the document that reads as AI-generated — not a probability that the student cheated, and not a measurement with courtroom precision. Turnitin itself treats low scores as unreliable and warns against acting on the number alone. The defensible reading: a high score is a reason for a human to look closely and talk to the writer; it is not, by itself, a finding.
Can Turnitin detect paraphrased or humanized AI text?
Turnitin claims coverage of paraphrased AI text, and detection vendors — including us — actively train on humanizer output. In practice this is the hardest case for every detector: an AI paraphrase or an AI writing tool exists precisely to break the statistical patterns detection relies on, and the arms race runs in both directions. Assume partial coverage that changes with every model and tool update, which is one more reason scores on edited text deserve extra caution.
Can I check my essay before submitting it through Turnitin?
Not with Turnitin itself, in most cases — students generally cannot see the AI indicator. What you can do: run your draft through an external detector to see how machine-like your writing reads, and keep your process evidence (version history, drafts, notes) in order regardless of any score. The scanner on this page is free — 50 scans a day, up to 2,500 words per scan, no account — and reports a verdict with every sentence scored, so if something in your draft reads as AI-shaped you can see exactly which lines. Remember that markhuman and Turnitin are different classifiers: our verdict cannot promise their verdict. What it can do is show you how detector-shaped your writing is before anyone else scores it.
What should I do if Turnitin flags my work and I wrote it myself?
Gather process evidence before the meeting: version history (Google Docs or Word autosave showing the document growing over time is the strongest single artifact), earlier drafts, notes, and your research trail. Ask what score was reported and what your institution's policy says detector evidence is worth — and know that Turnitin's own guidance says the indicator should not be the sole basis for action. If English is not your first language, say so: the elevated false-positive rate for non-native writers is documented in peer-reviewed research and integrity offices should know about it.
Know what your writing looks like to a detector
Free, no account — a named verdict with every sentence scored, on your draft, before anyone else runs theirs.