The arrival of writing assistants produced a predictable reaction in education: how do we detect it and how do we ban it. It is a legitimate question, but it takes up all the space and blocks more useful ones.
Why detection is not a strategy
Tools for detecting generated text have an error rate that cannot be ignored, and the errors are not evenly distributed: text written by non-native speakers is flagged as generated more often. An accusation of misconduct based on such a tool is a serious decision taken on weak evidence.
Even if detection worked perfectly, it would solve a compliance problem, not a learning one.
The more useful question
If a text can be generated in ten seconds, what is the assignment that requires that text actually assessing?
Sometimes the answer is: the ability to structure an argument — a real competence, worth assessing differently. Other times the answer is: the ability to produce text that ticks a format — which was not worth assessing before either.
What changes in assessment
The process becomes visible. Drafts, intermediate versions, reading notes, justification of choices. Harder to fake than a final product and, in any case, more informative about learning.
Oral defence returns. A five-minute conversation about a piece of work immediately shows whether the person who submitted it understands it.
Assignments anchored in context. A task that requires connecting to a class discussion, to local data or to personal experience is not solved by a generic request.
Declared use of tools. Instead of a ban, a requirement to state which tool was used and for what, plus a reflection on the result. It turns use into an object of study.
Where it genuinely helps
Fast feedback on exercises. A student who gets an immediate response to an exercise learns faster than one who waits a week.
Tireless repeated explanation. A student can ask for the same explanation in five different ways, without the embarrassment of asking a fifth time.
Reducing the teacher's administrative load. Preparing exercise variants, adapting material to another level, generating examples.
What has to be guarded
Wrong information. An assistant that explains a concept incorrectly to a student who has no way of detecting the error does real harm.
Premature dependence. A student handed a ready-made structure before ever practising building one does not learn to build it.
Students' data. Systems used in education process minors' data. The requirements are stricter, and responsibility rests with the institution, not the supplier.