Teacher's Trojan Horse TikTok Trick Aims to Catch AI-Written Essays

English teacher Daina Petronis shares a "Trojan Horse" trick on TikTok to catch students using AI to write essays. She hides a prompt in the assignment for the AI to include unusual words she can search for.

The trick involves splitting the prompt into paragraphs, adding a hidden phrase requesting specific words, making that text white/small, then putting paragraphs back together.

If a student copies the prompt into ChatGPT, the AI-written essay will include those "Trojan Horse" words not logically fitting the topic.

In testing, MailOnline prompted ChatGPT with and without the hidden phrase. The essay with it included one of the two "Trojan Horse" words.

Commenters shared enthusiasm but also skepticism that students could read the AI-essay and remove the illogical words before submitting it.