Social media star & gymnast Olivia Dunne posts TikTok promoting use of AI for writing college essays

LSU gymnast and social media star Olivia Dunne has stirred controversy for posting a TikTok video promoting an artificial intelligence service to write essays.

In the post to her account, Dunne created a ten second video promoting Caktus.ai with text in the video reading, ‘Need to get my creativity flowing for my essay due at midnight.’

She then showed off the bot’s capabilities to write paragraphs in the video tagged as a ‘paid partnership’.

The caption on the video read, ‘@caktus.ai will provide real resources for you to cite at the end of your essays and paragraphs ;)’

This video drew criticism in the comments underneath it, but also led to a notice being sent out to students on LSU’s main campus in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The statement did not specifically mention Dunne.

Dunne, a junior, indirectly suggested the use of the technology for completing school work

Dunne has been twice named an Academic All-American & to the SEC’s academic Honor Roll 

‘At LSU, our professors and students are empowered to use technology for learning and pursuing the highest standards of academic integrity,’ the school’s statement said. 

‘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.’ 

While the university’s code of conduct doesn’t specifically have a punishment for the use of artificial intelligence, the school does count plagiarism as academic misconduct.

According to the university, plagiarism is defined as the, ‘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.’

Dunne, a junior, has been named to the SEC’s academic honor roll twice and has also been selected as a WCGA Academic All-American.