Their Professors Caught Them Cheating. They Used A.I. to Apologize.

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/us/university-illinois-students-cheating-ai.html

https://archive.ph/NSViP

Their Professors Caught Them Cheating. They Used A.I. to Apologize.
Two professors at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign said they grew suspicious after receiving identical apologies from dozens of students they had accused of academic dishonesty.
By Neil Vigdor and Hannah Ziegler
Oct. 29, 2025

Confronted with allegations that they had cheated in an introductory data science course and fudged their attendance, dozens of undergraduates at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recently sent two professors a mea culpa via email.

But there was one problem, a glaring one: They had not written the emails. Artificial intelligence had, according to the professors, Karle Flanagan and Wade Fagen-Ulmschneider, an academic pair known to their students and social media followers as the Data Science Duo.

The students got their comeuppance in a large lecture hall on Oct. 17, when the professors read aloud their identical, less-than-genuine apologies from a projector screen, video from that class showed. Busted. The professors posted about it on social media, where the gotcha moment drew widespread attention.

“They said, ‘Dear Professor Flanagan, I want to sincerely apologize,’” Professor Flanagan said. “And I was like, Thank you. They’re owning up to it. They’re apologizing. And then I got another email, the second email, and then the third. And then everybody sort of sincerely apologizing, and suddenly it became a little less sincere.”

...

[Historic NY]

1. Dumb and dumber/

[marble falls]

2. How is using AI not plagiarism? AI IS pure plagiarism, the apology letters certainly indicate it.

[obamanut2012]

3. It needs rto be considered that

[rsdsharp]

4. They got caught cheating, and then cheated on their apology?

Here’s some career advice for these “scholars.” Practice this phrase:

Do you want fries with that?

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

5. Dear Professor, I'm very sorry ... (1)

(1) Google, (2) ibid, (3) ibid, (4) ibid ....
.......

It should be ok, as long as you cite your sources.