TU Munich: Court ruling confirms rejection of AI essay

The Technical University of Munich rejected a student applicant because he apparently had an essay written with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). Now the university has received backing from the competent administrative court.

AI most likely created the essay

AI in general and chatbots in particular are now a phenomenon for society as a whole. Many people are not only asking themselves what impact chatGPT will have on the future development of the labor market, for example. The topic also plays a major role in education. After all, it is probably an open secret that pupils and students are seeking support from artificial intelligence. This has now cost one prospective Master’s student his place at university. The student allegedly used a chatbot as part of the application process for a Master’s degree course.

The university became skeptical and immediately rejected the applicant. This is according to a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. According to the professors responsible for the application process, the essay was simply too perfect to have been written by a Bachelor’s student. This applied not only to the grammar, but also to the sentence structure and the layout of the text. The reason for the skepticism could also be the fact that the essay was not written in German, but in English. However, the applicant’s previous history is probably much more important than the excessive perfection of the text.

According to the university, he had already submitted an application the year before. However, the essay he submitted with his first application was significantly worse than that of his new attempt. From the professors’ point of view, it would be nothing short of a miracle if a person could achieve such significant improvements in just one year. Accordingly, they did what real scientists do: Putting it to the test. The professors simply entered the task into ChatGPT and took a look at the results. This largely corresponded to the applicant’s essay.

• More on the topic: ChatGPT: Labor court allows AI use

An important judgment

However, the applicant was not satisfied with the rejection on the basis of alleged AI use. He took his case to the competent administrative court in Munich, where he also suffered a setback. The court quickly ruled in favor of the TU Munich, as can be seen from the ruling. From the applicant’s point of view, the examination by the professors does not appear to have any probative value. On the contrary, he considers himself to be at a disadvantage. After all, a rejection could not be justified on the grounds that his essay was too high quality. He also criticized the lack of evidence and the fact that only assumptions were made. He was obviously unable to convince the court. It relied on the experience and expertise of the professors.