• Some professors say students are using new tech to pass off AI-generated content as their own.

• Academics are concerned that colleges are not set up to combat the new style of cheating.

• Professors say they considering switching back to written assessments and oral exams.

College professors are feeling the heat when it comes to AI.

Some professors say students are using OpenAI's buzzy chatbot, ChatGPT, to pass off AI-generated content as their own.

Antony Aumann, a philosophy professor at Northern Michigan University, and Darren Hick, a philosophy professor at Furman University, both say they've caught students submitting essays written by ChatGPT.

The issue has led to professors considering creative ways to stamp out the use of AI in colleges.

Blue books and oral exams

"I'm perplexed about how to handle AI going forward," Aumann told Insider.

He said one way he was considering tackling the problem was shifting to lockdown browsers, a type of software that aims to prevent students from cheating when taking exams online or remotely.

Other academics are considering more drastic action.

"I'm planning on going medieval on the students and going all the way back to oral exams," Christopher Bartel, a philosophy professor at Appalachian State University, said. "They can AI generate text all day long in their notes if they want, but if they have to be able to speak it, that's a different thing."

Bartel said there were inclusivity concerns around this, however. "Students who have deep social anxieties about speaking in public is something we'll have to figure out."

"Another way to deal with AI is for faculty to avoid giving students assignments that are very well covered," he said. "If the students have to be able to engage with a unique idea that hasn't been covered very deeply in other places there isn't going to be a lot of text that the AI generator can draw from."

Aumann said some professors were suggesting going back to traditional written assessments like blue books.