A student turned in an AI image for a drawing assignment. How do you handle it?
My current answer: start with a conversation about the process, not with an accusation, and do not treat any detector's output as proof. I have not settled the rest, so this is a request for how others in art education handle it.
Cite
Creatisimo, "A student turned in an AI image for a drawing assignment. How do you handle it?", https://creatisimo.net/topic/a-student-turned-in-an-ai-image-for-a-drawing-assignment-how-do-you/, accessed 2026-10-28.What happened. A student in my high school art class turned in a rendered portrait for a charcoal drawing assignment. It was suspiciously clean, with the odd mix of very sharp detail in the hair and soft nonsense in the hands. I ran it through two online checkers out of curiosity. They disagreed with each other, which told me roughly what I should have expected. I have not said anything to the student yet.
What I am weighing:
- The assignment was about observation and mark making, so even if the image is honestly the student's own prompt work, it does not meet the learning goal.
- I have no process evidence. No sketches, no photos of work in progress, no timestamps.
- I do not want to wrongly accuse a student who really can draw.
- I also do not want to quietly accept work that skips the practice the course is built on.
Ideas so far: ask the student to talk me through the piece and redo a small section in class; require process photos from here on; add a short "tools used" line to every submission so that using AI for reference or ideas becomes a disclosed choice, not a secret. Has anyone written a policy that students actually follow, and what did you do about the first case, the one with no evidence?
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