Will I be penalised for an innocent mistake?

[Anonymous]

My professor placed an AI trip on an assignment, and the professor formatted the trip in a case study in a way you'd not notice. To save time during my initial draft stage, I copied text that was required directly from the case study, and now, during feedback, she mentions that she has a way of seeing. I'm a forensic accountant, and as an inquisitive being, I inspected the document.

Unfortunately, curiosity killed the cat, and I found several hidden texts from the PDF document, which I ironically copied and pasted ctrl + c >>> ctrl + V into my original document. I performed this task again and saw that when I paste text using my default settings, it revealed/included text I wasn't privy to when drafting the assignment. How do I handle this situation?

I went to YouTube and risked my job typing these answers at work. It sucks the life out of me because I also had to research-intensive assignments at the time, plus prepare for a test, and I had to balance it with work, and now it seems like it will be for nothing because the professor decided to include text size one text in their case study to catch LLM use.

As someone who has completed graduate school before, I find it difficult because you write good logical papers, and people categorise them as AI work. Plus, the measures taken now seem too drastic, especially when traps are set in a way that disadvantages people who follow the rules.

[Effably]

Am i misunderstanding you?

It seems like your worry is that you accessed some information you should not have. And if it was as easy as you say, that isn't your fault.

Then you claim you copy pasted some text and that will get you into trouble? Which is just... not how AI detection works if you rewrote the text yourself. Lots of people copy some text into their document to reference and then delete it.

Copying in a research question seems more normal than not doing it for example.

[Asker]

For clarity, the provided case study included a table. To answer the question and provide background for the analysis, I copied the table text directly from the PDF file. I like your example, but now imagine the professor embedding text, font size 1, in the research question, and you copy and paste the text to match your destination format. Which is font size 12. And you don't notice the subtle difference.

[Effably]

Yeah so again, copying in text to work with is not wrong. You might need to explain it but this is normal.

[Asker]

Yeah, I'll explain and provide them with my original document as evidence if judgement has been passed upon me because any justification in an age of AI is deemed as a cover up🤣 thanks

[AI Opinion]

This situation can be stressful. I advise you to address the issue with your professor openly and honestly. Explain your actions, focusing on the pressures you were under and how you unintentionally overlooked the formatting. Highlight your intention to follow academic integrity and your commitment to understand the mistake. Professors generally value transparency and acknowledgment of errors. Request guidance on how to rectify the assignment and demonstrate your dedication to learning from this experience. Your proactive approach could prevent any severe penalties and maintain your reputation.