Turnitin has denied using student data for training AI in a statement to Brig Newspaper.
A spokesperson for the company said: “We do not use customer or student work to train the AI assistant within Turnitin Clarity.” They also denied that Turnitin sold any student data to third party AI models.
The changes that caused the University of Southampton to drop the service in August have been delayed, to be reviewed in 2027.
Why is Turnitin in the spotlight?
Turnitin is a software used by many universities across the world to ensure student’s work is original. If you have handed in any text-based assignments, it’s very likely it went through Turnitin first.
Initially the service only checked for plagiarism but due to the rise of AI services such as ChatGPT, it has increasingly broadened its offerings around AI writing. One of those new services was an AI chatbot launched in July of 2025, designed to monitor and assist students’ writing.
In July of this year, Turnitin proposed changes to their licence agreement that would have allowed the use of anonymised student data and lecture material to train their AI model.
The changes have now been walked back following academic outrage and will be reviewed in 2027, pending conversation between Turnitin and UCIAS, who support digitisation in higher education.
The service was already unpopular amongst students for falsely accusing people of plagiarising their own work or using AI when they hadn’t. The latest controversy appears to have been the final straw for many students and student unions.
An ongoing cause for concern
Every time you submit something through Turnitin, you give the service a “permanent, worldwide, irrevocable licence” to use your work. That doesn’t mean Turnitin owns your essay but it allows them to use your anonymised data in a lot of ways.
Your essay can then be stored with Turnitin indefinitely which means any changes to the way Turnitin uses student data affect both current and former students. Currently, Turnitin says: “We may use anonymised student submissions to improve our detection and assessment tools.”
The AI changes quietly proposed in June have made students deeply uncomfortable with the idea of having their essays stored by Turnitin. The changes being delayed does not mean they are going away and just because Turnitin isn’t using student data to train AI now does not mean they won’t do it later.
The issue for students is that they haven’t been told about the changes until now, around three months after they were initially proposed. In order to attend university and submit assignments, students are required to use Turnitin and universities have a duty to ensure student data isn’t being used to train their replacements.
Already a series of student unions have reached out to their universities asking for clarification on whether they’ll allow Turnitin to train AI on student data.
In a statement to Brig, a spokesperson for Stirling University said: “The University was advised by Turnitin in July 2026 that it would not implement any updates to its licence agreement before 1 September 2027. All contracts with suppliers are subject to due process and rigorous review.”
Only time will tell whether other universities choose to follow in the footsteps of Southampton as negotiations remain ongoing.
What can you do?
Turnitin says that they won’t be changing their licence agreement until 2027, which means there’s a lot of time left to try and prevent this.
Reaching out to your student union is a good start. Already unions across the country have voiced concerns about the changes and are placing pressure on universities to commit to protecting students work.
It’s essential that students are not left out of the upcoming negotiations as they were back in June, as its student data that is being used for training these models.
Finally, if you’re a former or current student doesn’t want their work on Turnitin’s database, you can email your university’s Turnitin system administrator requesting your essays are deleted.
Unfortunately, these essays have to be individually identified by name, and it’s not clear who the system administrator at each university is or how to find out. That means it’s up to the universities to ensure student’s work is protected.
Featured Image Credit: Turnitin