Lucknow: Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University (AKTU) has rejected 80 out of 1,360 postgraduate theses in the current academic session after detecting 20% to 50% plagiarism and use of AI-generated content.
Associate Dean PG Studies and Research Seethalekshmi K said, “The permissible limit for using AI-generated content is below 10%. In several cases, even small stretches were checked and the overall similarity index ranged between 20% and 50%, far beyond the allowed threshold.”
The action has put students at risk, as submission of an approved thesis is mandatory for the award of a degree. Students of the 2025-26 batch will not be awarded degrees until their theses are cleared.
A PG thesis is first submitted by the student and approved by the department head, then uploaded to Turnitin for checking. The software compares it with published sources and generates a similarity report. Faculty reviews the report and decides acceptance, revision or rejection based on plagiarism and originality levels.
“The rejected submissions belong to MTech, MPharm, MArch and other PG courses in AKTU and its affiliated colleges. The screening was carried out using Turnitin software, which flagged copied text and suspected AI-generated material,” said Seethalekshmi K.
Turnitin is a software used by universities to check plagiarism in assignments, research papers and theses. It compares submitted text with a large database that includes books, journals, research papers, student submissions and internet content. Turnitin has an AI detection feature that analyses writing patterns such as predictable sentence structure, uniform tone, lack of human variation and uses machine learning models trained on human vs AI text. It then gives an AI writing percentage score as well.
“The affected students have been given three months to reconstruct and resubmit their work. This includes rewriting sections, improving citations and ensuring originality,” said Seethalekshmi K.
Earlier this year, Lucknow University flagged plagiarism and use of AI in PhD theses.
