Table of Contents
- Key Takeaways
- What is SafeAssign and How It Works?
- Why AI Text Often Bypasses SafeAssign
- Alternative to SafeAssign for Detecting AI: Detect.aI
- Key Features of Detect.ai
- How Detect.ai Works
- Pricing
- SafeAssign vs. Detect.ai: Compared for AI Text Flagging
- Final Thoughts
- FAQs
- Will SafeAssign fail me for AI use?
- Can institutions adapt SafeAssign settings?
- Is AI detection perfect?
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SafeAssign can’t accurately detect AI—it checks plagiarism, not AI writing. Learn why and explore better AI detection tools like Detect.ai.
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Can SafeAssign Detect AI? What Students & Educators Should Know (+ Better Alternatives)
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SafeAssign has long been a go-to tool for checking plagiarism in academic writing.
But with AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini now shaping how students draft essays, a new question has surfaced: Can SafeAssign actually detect AI?
The short answer is No
In this article, we’ll break down how SafeAssign works, why it often misses AI content, and a better alternative for detecting AI content.
Key Takeaways
- SafeAssign can not accurately detect AI. It is designed to check for plagiarism, not AI-generated text.
- SafeAssign scans submissions against a database of papers, journals, and web pages to find overlapping text. It doesn’t analyze writing style.
- An AI detector is better because it goes beyond text matching by evaluating tone. Many educators and students now trust Detect.ai for accurate AI text detection.
What is SafeAssign and How It Works?
SafeAssign is Blackboard’s built-in plagiarism detection tool used by schools and universities to check the originality of student submissions.
It’s primarily meant to identify copied or closely paraphrased content from published materials or previously submitted papers.
When a file is uploaded, SafeAssign compares the text against several databases, including:
- Internet sources
- Institutional archives
- Global Reference Database containing millions of student papers.
It then generates an Originality Report, highlighting any sections that match existing sources and giving a similarity percentage.
However, SafeAssign doesn’t use AI-content detection algorithms.
It only looks for direct text overlaps, not writing patterns or sentence structures.
This means an essay written entirely by AI but phrased uniquely will often appear “clean” to SafeAssign’s system.
Why AI Text Often Bypasses SafeAssign
AI-generated text usually passes through SafeAssign undetected because the tool isn’t designed to recognize machine writing.
It only checks for matches, not authorship.
When tools like ChatGPT or Gemini create content, they generate original sentences that don’t exist anywhere else online or in SafeAssign’s databases.
Since there’s no prior record of those exact words, SafeAssign reads the text as unique.
Additionally, SafeAssign doesn’t analyze the linguistic fingerprints that distinguish human writing from AI.
It doesn’t assess sentence rhythm, vocabulary patterns, or coherence structures, features that specialized detectors like Detect.ai evaluate precisely.
This is why most AI-written essays appear plagiarism-free, even though they may not reflect genuine student work.
Alternative to SafeAssign for Detecting AI: Detect.aI
While SafeAssign focuses on plagiarism, Detect.ai is built to identify AI-generated writing even when it’s completely original.
It doesn’t rely on text-matching databases but instead studies how sentences are formed, how ideas flow, and how language behaves.
This makes it far more capable of catching AI-written work that other systems overlook.
Key Features of Detect.ai
- Purpose-built AI detection: Designed solely to identify machine-written text, not just copied sources
- High accuracy and reliability: Uses linguistic modeling and token analysis to detect subtle AI writing patterns.
- Human readability scoring: Evaluates whether a text “reads” like human writing, helping educators spot suspiciously uniform tone or rhythm.
- Multiple content tools: Integrates with AI Content Detector AI Humanizer AI Paraphraser, and Fact-Checking Aid for deeper content analysis.
- Fast results: Generates detection reports within seconds.
- Secure and private: Doesn’t store or share uploaded files, ensuring complete data privacy for both students and instructors.
How Detect.ai Works
Detect.ai analyzes text at a structural and linguistic level instead of comparing it to other sources.
It looks for token distribution, sentence predictability, and consistency markers, the subtle fingerprints AI systems often leave behind.
This allows it to determine whether a piece of writing was likely produced by a human or generated through AI, even when there are no external matches to flag.
Educators can use it to maintain academic integrity, while students can use it to self-check their work before submission.
In both cases, Detect.ai gives a clear, data-backed confidence score that shows how “human” or “AI-like” the text is.
Pricing
Detect.ai offers flexible subscription plans tailored to different needs, from individual students and educators to complete institutional setups.
SafeAssign vs. Detect.ai: Compared for AI Text Flagging
Both SafeAssign and Detect.ai aim to promote academic honesty, but they approach it in very different ways.
SafeAssign remains a trusted plagiarism checker for traditional text matching, while Detect.ai is purpose-built for the new challenge of identifying AI-generated writing.
The table below highlights how they compare across key factors that educators and students care about most.
Feature | SafeAssign | Detect.ai |
Primary Function | Plagiarism detection using database comparison. | AI-content detection through linguistic and structural analysis. |
AI Detection Accuracy | Low (only flags AI text if it overlaps with existing sources). | High (Detects AI writing patterns even in fully original text). |
Database Coverage | Extensive (academic journals, web sources, student archives). | Not database-based (analyzes text behavior rather than stored content). |
Speed of Analysis | Moderate depends on the database size and connection. | Fast (produces AI detection results in seconds). |
Use Cases | Ideal for checking copied or paraphrased student work. | Ideal for detecting machine-generated writing and maintaining integrity in AI-era submissions. |
Report Type | Originality Report with similarity percentage. | Confidence-based AI detection report with human-likeness score. |
Ease of Use | Integrated into Blackboard LMS; straightforward for plagiarism checking. | Web-based; accessible through AI Content Detector and related tools. |
Pricing | Included with Blackboard; institutional subscription required. | Free (paid option starts at $15 per month) |
Detect.ai clearly outperforms SafeAssign when it comes to identifying AI-generated writing.
Still, SafeAssign remains valuable for spotting plagiarism.
Final Thoughts
AI writing tools are changing how academic work is created and checked.
While SafeAssign remains a solid plagiarism detector, it simply wasn’t built to keep pace with the growing sophistication of AI-generated content.
Detecting originality today requires tools that understand how AI writes, not just where text comes from.
That’s why many educators and students are turning to Detect.ai, a tool built for the reality of AI-assisted writing.
You can get started with the AI Content Detector.
More interestingly, there’s even the AI Humanizer that helps both sides of the classroom approach AI responsibly and confidently.
FAQs
Will SafeAssign fail me for AI use?
Not directly. SafeAssign doesn’t detect AI writing on its own. It only flags matches to existing sources. However, if your AI-generated text includes copied or paraphrased material that exists online or in its database, it may raise a similarity score that could require explanation.
Can institutions adapt SafeAssign settings?
Yes. Instructors and institutions can adjust SafeAssign’s settings within Blackboard to include or exclude specific databases, allow multiple submissions, or decide whether student papers are added to the Global Reference Database.
Is AI detection perfect?
No AI detector is 100% perfect. Tools like Detect.ai provide highly accurate results with a 99% rate by analyzing linguistic and structural patterns.
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