Metadata: What it Means for Your AI Cheating Case
College professors and administrators are terrified that the use of AI is ruining their ability to impart an education. They are responding with fast-and-furious accusations and giving students very little time to defend their academic integrity.
A key part of proving allegations of AI cheating or asserting a student’s innocence often hinges on metadata. For that reason, it is crucial for students and their families to understand how metadata can work for or against them when they’ve been accused of AI cheating. A student’s reputation is an extremely valuable commodity that must be protected. Once a student is labeled a cheater, they can lose scholarships, be denied admission to elite programs, and lose educational and career opportunities. Defense is vitally important.
What is Metadata?
Metadata is generally defined as “data about data.” That data is structured information that puts other information into context so that information can be used effectively. Metadata can be classified as one of three types:
- Descriptive metadata is information that helps identify the resource referenced
- Structural metadata explains how the data is formatted or organized
- Administrative metadata is information provided to assist with the use or management of the data. It might include access rights, copyright info, and the most recent backup time.
One type of metadata that people are familiar with is the data attached to digital photos. It usually includes the date and time the image was taken, the GPS coordinates of the location, and information about the camera used to capture the image. Music files, such as a song stored on an MP3 player, include metadata such as the artist name, song title, year of release, album name, and sometimes the genre.
Text documents, which are most relevant in cases involving accusations of AI cheating, generally include the name of the “author,” the file size, the date of creation, and the date the file was most recently modified.
Metadata in the Academic Context
During the process of researching and writing an assignment, a student creates many different types of metadata. Gathering and preserving this metadata is a crucial part of the defense process, but it can be difficult to do without the assistance of digital forensics experts.
Some of the metadata produced during a student’s creative process includes:
- Information from word processors, such as editing time, keystroke patterns, and version histories
- Information from the institution’s or professor’s learning management system (LMS). Log files usually record every mouse click, every page refresh, and the time spent on an assignment page.
- File elements, including creation dates, author tags, hidden text, or character replacements that have been flagged by software
This metadata may be the only solid evidence available to support or refute accusations of AI cheating, so it is vital to gather as much of it as possible and to understand how to interpret and use it.
Metadata Can Be Used Against You
Colleges and universities are becoming quite adept at weaponizing metadata against students. They may use evidence of a short login to the LMS as circumstantial evidence of cheating.
If text is copied and pasted from an outside source, the normal metadata is disrupted or destroyed. When large chunks of text appear quickly in a document, this is often used as “evidence” of plagiarism. However, the use of the material could be well within acceptable guidelines, such as when the material is quoted and properly attributed. Or a student could have composed text in another program or format and imported it into a new document, which does not reveal the metadata created when the text was first written.
It is becoming routine for colleges to actively search for metadata that appears to indicate text manipulation or the possible use of AI bypass tools. Any indication of this is used as evidence of unacceptable deceptive practices, which are classified as a form of cheating. Because university staff who work on these cases often lack the technical literacy necessary to accurately interpret metadata, they see “proof” of cheating when, in fact, the data only reveals a student’s sloppy or inefficient creation process.
How a Student Defense Attorney Can Use Metadata to Refute Cheating Accusations
While metadata can serve as evidence in the case against a student, it can also often be used to the student’s advantage. For instance, when a student can produce a multi-session version history of a file in a word processing program, it provides powerful evidence of the gradual human writing process used to produce the document. Records of search histories, document versions, and screen recordings can be used to document research sessions. It is also helpful to demonstrate that citations correspond to recognized academic databases and are clearly not AI hallucinations.
To make the best use of metadata in defense, it is important to preserve and organize it. Time-stamped drafts should be exported and preserved. Screenshots and change tracking records also need to be preserved, along with search history data. Digging through records to find this data is time-consuming and can be difficult without experience, but it is crucial to take all possible steps to gather evidence to defend the student’s reputation for academic integrity.
The Stakes are Higher Than You May Realize
Many students are accused of AI cheating, and that often gives people the impression that it is nothing to worry about. This is a dangerous assumption. Once a student has let an accusation pass without challenging it, that student acquires a label as someone who cannot be trusted and who would resort to unethical methods to get by. This label can last a very long time, and may never entirely go away.
A record of AI cheating can cause a student to lose scholarships and be expelled from student organizations. It can prevent them from gaining access to programs or entrance to graduate school. It can interfere with professional licensing and career goals. Worst of all, it makes people consider the student untrustworthy, even when the student’s days are long past.
At Nesenoff & Miltenberg, we have dedicated decades to student defense because we know what’s at stake when a student’s integrity is called into question. We work effectively to protect students’ reputations and future opportunities. Contact us to schedule a confidential consultation to learn more about the assistance our team could provide.