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In December 2023, two students at Hingham High School used Grammarly to generate a script for an AP U.S. History project. The AI output included fabricated citations, which the students submitted as their own work. The school identified the plagiarism through Turnitin and other detection tools, leading to disciplinary action. The students' parents subsequently sued the school district, but a federal court rejected their request for an injunction, finding that the school acted within its discretion.
In December 2023, two Hingham High School students ("RNH" and unnamed) reportedly used Grammarly to create a script for an AP U.S. History project. The AI-generated text included fabricated citations to nonexistent books, which the student copied and pasted without verification or acknowledgment of AI use. This violated the school's academic integrity policies, leading to disciplinary action. RNH's parents later sued the school district, but a federal court ruled in favor of the school.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
Using AI systems to gain a personal advantage over others such as through cheating, fraud, scams, blackmail or targeted manipulation of beliefs or behavior. Examples include AI-facilitated plagiarism for research or education, impersonating a trusted or fake individual for illegitimate financial benefit, or creating humiliating or sexual imagery.
Also classified as
The AI system generated hallucinated, nonexistent citations which the student copied into their assignment as factual sources.
The student overrelied on a general-purpose writing assistant to generate factual historical citations without verifying the output.
The student used an AI writing assistant to engage in academic dishonesty and plagiarism to gain an unfair academic advantage on a school project.
Human
Due to a decision or action made by humans
Unintentional
Due to an unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed
The academic integrity incident and subsequent lawsuit were caused by the human student's decision to cheat using AI and the parents' decision to sue, with the negative academic consequences being an unintentional outcome for the student.
A localized academic integrity incident where high school students used Grammarly to generate a project script with hallucinated citations. The event resulted in school discipline and a failed lawsuit by the parents, presenting negligible national security implications.
The AI system Grammarly acted as an Assistant, designed to augment human writing. The students used it to generate text and citations for their history project, which required human oversight and validation that they failed to provide.
Minimal or No Risk: Grammarly is a general-purpose AI writing assistant that poses low or negligible risks to users and society under normal use.
The primary AI system, Grammarly, was used by the student as a writing assistant to generate the script. Turnitin was subsequently used by the school for cheating detection.
The reports provide highly detailed, consistent, and factual accounts of the incident, including specific quotes from the federal court ruling, details of the fabricated citations, and the school's disciplinary actions. There is no significant ambiguity regarding the sequence of events.
None
Technology
AI Hallucination of Citations
Grammarly generated citations to nonexistent books which were copied.
AI Detection Tool Flags
Turnitin and Chat Zero flagged the submitted script as AI-generated.
Data Inputs
Unverified AI Output
Student inputted prompts and copied output without verifying sources.
Wholesale Text Generation
The AI tool generated full paragraphs of text rather than brief ideas.
Human Factors
Student Plagiarism of AI
Student passed off AI-generated text as their own original history project.
Misconception of AI Ownership
Student believed AI-generated content was their property and needed no citation.
Parental Denial of AI Misuse
Parents defended the student's actions by claiming AI use isn't cheating.
Process and Methods
Bypassing Academic Research
Student spent only 52 minutes on the project using AI instead of deep research.
Failure to Cite AI Tool
Student did not acknowledge or cite Grammarly in their submitted draft.
Management
AI Policy Communication
School distributed separate AI guidelines but did not update handbook timely.
Regulatory Environment
Ambiguous School Handbook
The student handbook lacked explicit language regarding generative AI tools.
Evolving Educational Standards
Rapid AI development outpaced standard school regulatory frameworks.
AI system involved
Identified by automated extraction; can differ from the alleged developers above.
