Can SafeAssign Detect AI Writing and Plagiarism?

SafeAssign is one of the most popular and widely-used plagiarism detection programs available today. It’s primarily used by schools and universities and tightly integrated into the popular Blackboard LMS (Learning Management System).

Blackboard and SafeAssign are now also part of Anthology (an EdTech software as a service — SaaS company). 

Initially, SafeAssign was designed to help detect and prevent academic plagiarism. 

• How does SafeAssign stack up to modern plagiarism detection? 
• Can it detect AI writing?

Take a closer look at what SafeAssign is, what it excels at, and where it falls short. Then, compare the differences between traditional plagiarism detectors like SafeAssign and modern AI and plagiarism detection software.

What Is SafeAssign and How Does It Work? 

SafeAssign is one part of the widely-used LMS Blackboard — now part of Anthology.

According to Northern Illinois University, SafeAssign works by comparing student submissions to institutional archives, millions of online articles, and content from numerous academic publishers.

By scanning these documents for matches, SafeAssign identifies similar content in a report. The resulting report shows a percentage score that indicates how much matches text from other sources and how likely it is that the paper contains excessive amounts of paraphrasing or plagiarism. 

This gives educators the opportunity to check and see if the match occurred due to common phrasing, a properly cited quotation, or it is, in fact, plagiarism. 

SafeAssign is flexible enough to analyze the text for exact (verbatim) matches and paraphrasing.

• An exact match happens where text from the student’s submission directly matches text from a database. 
• Paraphrasing detection, on the other hand, is more difficult. This happens when the student has rephrased someone else’s work in their own words but has done so without properly citing the original author. 
• Improper citations occur when a student tries to cite the author but doesn’t do so fully or correctly. 

Beyond uncovering instances of plagiarism, SafeAssign can also support students as a valuable educational tool. Providing students with access to reports enables them to understand the importance of citing authors correctly. 

Can SafeAssign Detect AI Writing? 

So far, we’ve reviewed how SafeAssign detects plagiarism, but what about AI writing? SafeAssign is a powerful plagiarism detector, but AI detection involves a completely different suite of skills. 

Although SafeAssign is great at finding exact matches and uncovering instances of paraphrasing, it hasn’t yet released details about providing an AI detector.

Further, in one of Blackboard’s guides on assignment creation, the platform notes, “Research indicates a variety of issues with a reliance on AI detection.”

So, although SafeAssign is an excellent tool for detecting plagiarism, at this point in time it seems unlikely that they will include an AI detector as part of their suite of tools.  

Interested in learning more about the efficacy of AI detection software? Read a Meta-Analysis of Studies that review the performance of Originality.ai’s AI detector. Then, check out our AI Content Detector Accuracy Review.

Pros vs. Cons of SafeAssign

SafeAssign Pros

One of SafeAssign’s biggest strengths is its extensive database. 

• The database includes voluntarily-submitted documents from students across all of the institutions that use Blackboard. 
• It also includes access to the ProQuest ABI/Inform Journal Database which spans over two million documents and has a database that dates back to the 1990s.

What’s more, SafeAssign is part of Blackboard, so it’s integrated into the popular learning management system. For students and professors who are well-versed in how Blackboard works, SafeAssign allows them to scan for plagiarism conveniently. 

SafeAssign also features a user-friendly originality report, giving educators a clear way to make an informed decision on whether a paper is or isn’t plagiarism.

SafeAssign Cons

However, SafeAssign is not without its limitations. Although SafeAssign spots exact text matches and paraphrased text, it doesn’t offer AI detection capabilities despite the rise of AI content.

The lack of AI detection means that if educators want to scan assignments for AI-generated content and plagiarism they need to use multiple tools to do so.

A Modern Approach — Combining AI and Plagiarism Detection

With the rapid increase of AI writing tools, tools like Originality.ai that combine AI and plagiarism detection are more important than ever.

Reasons to combine AI with plagiarism detection:

• Writing tools like ChatGPT, GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Google Gemini are more accessible than ever and generate text on the fly based on expansive training. 
• The generated text is often entirely new, which means traditional plagiarism detectors may not catch it. 
• Sophisticated AI models also closely mimic human writing (context and style).

So, it’s easy to see how AI writing tools can throw off traditional plagiarism tools even if they’re drawing upon a database of millions of documents. 

AI’s evolving ability to create contextually relevant, human-like text, right down to the smallest details, means it can easily slip through the cracks of plagiarism detectors that are only looking for exact text matches. 

Beyond its AI and plagiarism detection features, Originality.ai continuously updates its algorithms to keep pace with the latest advancements in AI text generation. As AI models like GPT-4o-mini and others continue to evolve, Originality adapts to uncover new patterns and improve its detection accuracy. 

Next Steps to Uncover Plagiarism and AI Writing

If you’re looking for a versatile, modern solution to detect plagiarism alongside AI writing, consider Originality.ai. 

Originality.ai helps bridge the gap by giving you access to a state-of-the-art tool that’s built for plagiarism and AI-generated text detection. That way, you can maintain academic integrity and support students in writing unique, original content.