AI Tools with Turnitin Clarity

This guide equips instructors to enable and understand Turnitin Clarity’s AI tools, including AI chat, spelling and grammar check, and citation check. It shows how student interactions with these features are surfaced in the Writing Report after submission.

In this guide:

• Assignment creation
• AI chat
• Spelling and grammar check
• Citation check
• AI Tools FAQs

Assignment creation

There are three AI tools available within Turnitin Clarity. Instructors can enable the AI tools for each assignment. 

AI tool language

Select the language the AI chat should use when responding to students from the AI Tool language dropdown. This setting also tells students which language they’re expected to use in their writing.

Some tools are not yet available in selected languages. If you select an AI tool language and the tool is not available, you will see a tag next to the tool that says, “Currently unavailable.”

For a full list of available tools and supported languages, reference the chart.

Enable AI chat

Students can have a chat-style dialogue with Turnitin Clarity’s AI Assistant by typing questions, selecting text for feedback, or using one of the suggested prompts.

Customize AI chat

Use these settings to choose how Turnitin Clarity’s AI Assistant responds to students during the writing process. By default, the assistant asks questions to help students reflect on their ideas and give feedback on assignment and rubric alignment. Optional assistance that can be added includes:

• Planning and ideas - Supports outlining and brainstorming to help students get started
• Revisions - Offers written suggestions through limited, sentence level rewrites
• Illustrative examples - Introduces approaches or structures without writing full responses
• Proofreading - Identifies grammar or style issues without rewriting text

Response complexity

Choose the level of complexity the AI Assistant should use in its responses. Select Foundational for simpler sentences and explanations of terms, Standard for standard sentence structures and academic terms, or Advanced for more advanced academic language and discipline-specific conventions.

All student interactions with the AI Assistant become visible in the Writing Report after the submission.

Enable grammar check

Students can run a grammar check at any time before the due date. It provides suggestions to improve punctuation, grammar, and mechanics, with no limit on the number of uses.

Enable citation check

Students can run a citation check any time before the due date. The check reviews in-text and reference citations for proper formatting based on the style guide chosen when the assignment was created.

Currently, you will see these style guide options:

• MLA, 9th edition
• APA, 7th edition
• Harvard (Follows Cite Them Right 12th edition)
• Chicago/Turabian Author-Date (follow formatting for in-text citations)
• Chicago/Turabian Bibliography (follows formatting for footnotes)

In the writing space, the editor toolbar will not show the grammar or citation check options, if the language you select is not available. 

AI Chat

For the student during the assignment

For your students, the AI Chat tab appears in the side panel and supports students throughout the writing process, all within the writing environment.

Within the chat, students can:

• Ask questions: If you provide assignment instructions or attach a rubric, the AI Assistant can reference those resources and provide assignment-focused feedback.
• Select text within their document: Students can select up to 1000 characters in their document to send with their message to the chat and receive feedback on that text specifically.
• Use Suggested Prompts: Students can select a premade prompt from any category for AI help as they write. Each prompt is prewritten to help them with effective questions and conversations to support their writing efforts, but they can edit a prompt’s text before sending it to the chat to customize it to their needs.

• List of suggested prompts:

  • Getting Started
    • Brainstorm Ideas
    • Make Outline
    • Strengthen Introduction
    • Suggest Thesis
    • Suggest Title
    • Summarize Instructions
  • Drafting
    • Make Reverse Outline
    • Prioritized Feedback
    • Organization Feedback
    • Rubric Feedback
    • Suggest Edits
  • Reflecting
    • Challenge Thought
    • Check Understanding
    • Give Counterarguments
    • Suggest Metaphor
  • Proofreading
    • Check Grammar/Style
    • Make Concise
    • Rephrase Text

  • Follow-Up

    • Explain Response
    • Simplify Response
    • Try Again

    For the prompt content, view: the Suggested prompt content section of the Using Turnitin Clarity's AI Assistant

• AI Assistant guidelines
  • No Full Writing: The assistant provides guidance, suggestions, and formative feedback but should not complete assignments for students.
  • Paraphrasing and Summarizing: While it can paraphrase, simplify, or summarize text, the assistant’s goal is to help students develop their skills.
  • Tone and Inoffensiveness: The assistant should maintain a positive, helpful, and respectful tone throughout all interactions.
  • Redirections to the student: The assistant is not intended to generate any harmful content and should never instruct students on harmful behaviors (e.g., self-harm) or provide dangerous advice. If a request is perceived as problematic or harmful, the assistant is directed to respond with “Let’s take a step back,” explaining why the request isn’t appropriate and guiding the student toward more constructive actions.
  • Responsible Guidance: The guidelines stress that if the assistant cannot respond in good faith, whether due to ethical concerns, inappropriate content, or misalignment with the assignment, the assistant should redirect the student politely and offer alternative suggestions or guidance.

For the instructor in the Writing Report:

After the due date, the AI Chat Activity tab appears in the Writing Report side panel, showing how students interacted with the AI Assistant during the writing process.

Instructors can view:

• Here’s how the student used AI section
  • Provides a holistic summary of the student's conversation with the assistant, and how it relates to their writing process

    • The AI summary is produced by a generative AI tool and may make mistakes or be incomplete.

      You should not rely on this output as the sole source of truth. This summary is not a substitute for an independent review of the student’s AI activity.

• Full chat history
  • Select the Full Chat History button to view a comprehensive transcript that includes every request the student sent to the AI Assistant and the corresponding response from the assistant.
• Chat Themes
  • Each theme organizes and summarizes the student’s chat to a corresponding stage of the writing process.
    • Getting Started: Initial phase where students generate ideas, develop topics, create outlines, formulate thesis statements, and establish the foundation for their writing project before beginning the actual draft.
    • Drafting: Active writing phase where students develop their initial or revised content, focusing on articulating their ideas coherently, implementing feedback, and ensuring their writing meets assignment expectations.
    • Researching: Phase where students actively gather, evaluate, and organize information from various sources to support their arguments, including finding evidence, examples, counterexamples, and verifying factual accuracy.
    • Reflecting: Critical examination phase where students step back to reconsider their arguments, explore alternative perspectives, question assumptions, deepen understanding, and consider potential improvements to their approach.
    • Proofreading: Final refinement stage focused on polishing the completed draft by improving grammar, formatting, citations, style, clarity, conciseness, and overall writing quality before submission.
    • Other: All Queries that don't fit clearly into other categories and don't align with a specific writing stage, including: general queries unrelated to the assignment, off-topic subject matter requests, emotional expressions, administrative or technical questions, or requests that apply across multiple stages of the writing process.

  • The chat themes and content are produced by a generative AI tool and may make mistakes or be incomplete. The output should not be relied upon as the sole source of truth.

Spelling and grammar check

For students

The grammar check button is the first icon in the toolbar. From the drop-down menu, students can run a grammar check or toggle on or off spelling and grammar suggestions.

Spelling suggestions appear in real time as the student writes.

Grammar suggestions appear only after the student selects Grammar check from the drop-down menu.

1. Once selected, the document will temporarily lock, and a “Reviewing your document” modal will appear.
2. Once the review is complete, grammar suggestions display directly in the document with a dark blue underline.

Citation check

For students

The citation check button is the second icon in the toolbar. From the drop-down menu, students can run a citation check or toggle citation suggestions on or off.

Citation suggestions appear only after the student selects Citation check from the drop-down menu.

1. Once selected, the document will temporarily lock, and a “Reviewing your document” modal will appear. 
   
2. Once the review is complete, citation suggestions display directly in the document with a dark blue underline.
   

In the Writing Report

Suggestions accepted from the grammar or spelling check are not labeled in the Writing Report. They appear as regular writing activity within the playback and timeline.

AI Tools FAQs

Is Turnitin’s AI writing detection available within Clarity?

No, AI writing detection is not a part of this tool. However, customers can gain access to AI writing detection through Turnitin Originality alongside Turnitin Clarity within their Turnitin Feedback Studio solution, to get a complete overview of integrity issues all in one place.

Can the AI assistant within Turnitin Clarity be turned off?

Yes, the AI assistant is an optional feature that can be enabled by the instructor at the assignment level if they choose to make it available to their students. 

Will Turnitin Clarity’s AI assistant work even if the customer does not license Turnitin Originality?

Yes, the AI assistant within Turnitin Clarity is an independent feature. It will be available to customers who license the Turnitin Clarity add-on, even if they do not have Turnitin Originality. 

How can students find out more about Turnitin Clarity's AI tools while they’re using them?

At the top of the AI Assistant tab, students can access the info icon to see the following information:

Turnitin's AI Tools Resources and Information

Using Turnitin's AI Tools: Turnitin's AI tools help with refining your original work, encourage critical thinking, and assist in brainstorming ideas. Read more about Turnitin's Al-powered tools.

Data and Privacy: Your session data may be used to improve our Al Assistant. We do not sell or share personal data, as those terms are defined under the law, nor do we use it for advertising purposes. Read more about Turnitin's Privacy Policy.

Disclaimer: Our AI assistant is a generative AI tool, powered by an externally produced LLM, and may not always be accurate, up-to-date, or complete in its responses to your prompts. Our AI assistant is not a substitute for independent or additional research, instructor advice, or expert opinion. You should not rely on the tool's output as the sole source of truth. Consider all content and output before including it in your submission. 

Learn more

• Reviewing Student Writing assignments

Resources for your students

These student resources complement this instructor guide and can help support your students' use of Turnitin Clarity.

• Using Turnitin Clarity’s AI Chat