AI incident ·
Yale Student Suspended and Given F After GPTZero Allegedly Misclassified Exam as AI-Generated
On this page 7 sections
In brief
An AI system built by GPTZero and AI text detection system developers and deployed by Yale University, Universities and 3 others allegedly harmed University students, Thierry Rignol and 3 others.
- Risk domain
- Not classified
- Occurred
- Coverage
- 1 report
What happened
In 2024, Yale University reportedly used GPTZero as one factor in investigating whether Executive MBA student Thierry Rignol used AI on an exam. Rignol reportedly denied cheating and alleged the detector falsely classified his writing as AI-generated. Yale reportedly later suspended him for a year and gave him an F, while citing additional evidence and his conduct during the investigation. Rignol has challenged the process in federal court.
Editor's notes
The incident ID date is 06/11/2024, marking when one of the course professors reportedly emailed the dean about the suspicions. For more information on the case, please consult the docket here: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69607031/rignol-v-yale-university/. The incident ID was created 08/13/2026.
Laws on record for this risk area
No instrument on record yet covers this risk area where it happened. See the open queue.
Matched from the record's risk category and country to the instruments in effect recorded here: a law listed covers the area, which is not a finding that it applies to this incident. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).
News reports (1)
Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
- Alleged deployer
- Yale University Universities Professors Institutions of higher education Educational communities
- Alleged developer
- GPTZero AI text detection system developers
- Alleged harmed party
- University students Thierry Rignol Students Non-native English speakers Educational communities
AI systems implicated
GPTZeroAI text detection systemsAI-enabled decision support systemsAI detector technologyAI content detection models
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
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- Risk subdomain
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- Causal entity
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Related incidents
Linked by editors or by text similarity in the source dataset.
Source record: incident #1632 on the AI Incident Database · all 1 report