Cath Ellis, deputy vice‑chancellor at Western Sydney University, published an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald in May in which she urged students to complete their university assignments themselves and not rely on artificial intelligence. Ellis wrote the column in response to an essay by academic Kylie Moore‑Gilbert, who argued that students can easily outsource tasks to AI and that assessment may increasingly reward those who give the best prompts to the technology.
The story escalated when — according to The Guardian — it emerged that Ellis had used artificial intelligence in preparing her article. The Sydney Morning Herald later removed the piece from its platform, calling it "unacceptable."
Western Sydney University confirmed to The Guardian that Ellis uploaded approximately 40,000 words of her own material into the Copilot large language model to produce the article. Copilot summarised Ellis's earlier writings and thoughts and generated initial drafts; the university said these drafts reflected Ellis's views, though the wording was produced by the AI.
The university stated that in this instance the use of AI was judged to be "appropriate." Nevertheless, the paper withdrew the column after the circumstances of its publication and the AI use came to light.
The episode highlights the tensions in higher education as artificial intelligence becomes more widespread: some educators and students support ethical, augmentative uses of the technology, while others raise concerns when the human authorship behind essays or opinion pieces becomes unclear.
(The lead image for this article was generated with Google Nano Banana.)
