A Bolton student came perilously close to being wrongly accused of using artificial intelligence to cheat on their tests.

The student had been flagged up by computer software which believed they had used the notorious ChatGPT app to write text automatically.

But fortunately, the University of Bolton’s human staff found the computer was at fault and that the student had been blameless.

A University of Bolton spokesperson said: “In a case reported last year, software flagged up concerns that one student had possibly used ChatGTP to generate text.

“Our internal (human) checking procedures found the software had given a false positive and the case was dismissed.

The Bolton News: Students around the country have been found to have been using ChatGPTStudents around the country have been found to have been using ChatGPT (Image: Getty)

“The University of Bolton treats each case individually and academic staff apply a number of tests to determine suspected use of ChatGTP or similar systems.

“We would never penalise a student on the basis of a software flag alone.

“We always have academics check other relevant evidence."

The Bolton student’s case was uncovered thanks to a freedom of information request by student newspaper The Tab, which found that 377 students around the country had been investigated for using artificial intelligence bots like ChatGPT.

Unlike the Bolton student, not all were innocent with at least 146 so far having been judged guilty and investigations still ongoing at dozens of universities.

As many as 40 per cent of all UK universities have experienced issues with using ChatGPT including 23 of the 24 prestigious “Russell Group” universities.

Dr Richard Harvey, a professor of computer science at the University of East Anglia, says ChatGPT at present is “almost configured for cheating.”

He said: “What I see is almost perfect grammar, and a stylistic construction that looks precisely like a 15-year-old school kid.”

“It has a very deeply boring but beautifully done argumentation structure.”

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Dr Andres Guadamuz, of University of Sussex, is also well-versed in spotting artificially intelligence, having marked three essays last January which were “clearly almost just copy and paste” from ChatGPT.

He said: “The voice is very clear to me, I don’t know how to explain it other than it is very boring.

"Whenever you are reading essays, people can’t help but put a little bit of themselves in that essay, but with ChatGPT it has a very clear structure.

“It’s well written, don’t get me wrong, but it’s lacking something.”