LSU’s Olivia Dunne promotes use of AI technology for essay writing, prompting university to issue warning

Louisiana State University has issued a statement warning its students over the use of artificial intelligence after star gymnast Olivia Dunne posted a video on social media promoting the technology as it relates to essay writing. 

Dunne, 20, posted a TikTok video on Sunday about the A.I. powered website Caktus AI, which has since gone viral among her more than 7.2 million followers on the popular social media platform. 

“Need to get my creativity flowing for my essay due at midnight,” a text in the video read. 

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The video, which has had nearly a million views, prompted the university to issue a warning to its students, cautioning them about plagiarism. 

“At LSU, our professors and students are empowered to use technology for learning and pursuing the highest standards of academic integrity,” the statement said, via The Advocate. 

“However, using AI to produce work that a student then represents as one’s own could result in a charge of academic misconduct, as outlined in the Code of Student Conduct.”

LSU’s code of conduct for students does not specifically outline the use of artificial intelligence but does qualify plagiarism as academic misconduct. 

Plagiarism is defined in the code of conduct as a “lack of appropriate citation, or the unacknowledged inclusion of someone else’s words, structure, ideas, or data; failure to identify a source, or the submission of essentially the same work for two assignments without permission of the Instructor.”

The statement did not specifically name Dunne in its statement. 

Dunne is in her junior year at LSU. In 2021, she made the SEC’s First-Year Academic Honor Roll and was a WCGA Academic All-American. She was a WCGA All-American in the uneven bars and, in 2022, was named to the SEC Academic Honor Roll.

Fox News’ Ryan Gaydos contributed to this report.