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One in seven UK undergraduates admit to having submitted work for assessment that was partly or entirely produced by artificial intelligence (AI), with many believing universities are ill-equipped to detect the technology.?

A survey by YouGov, which polled 1,027 domestic students at British universities between 13 June and 13 July 2025, sheds new light on the scale of AI use in higher education, as well as the blurred line between legitimate study support and cheating.

Two-thirds (66 per cent) of students say they use AI for work or study towards their degree.

Among this group, 23 per cent report having used AI to create material that formed part of graded assessments ¨C equivalent to 15 per cent of the full student sample.

This includes?3 per cent of all students who confess to having entirely created a piece of work that counted towards their grades and submitting it without editing.

A further?8 per cent admit they have used AI to generate entire pieces of graded work, which they then edited before handing in.

One in five AI users (20 per cent) also say they have employed the technology to produce sections of graded work, representing 13 per cent of the wider student population.

Detection remains a concern. Two-thirds of students (66 per cent) think it is likely that someone submitting work created entirely by AI would be caught by their university, although only 24 per cent consider this ¡°very likely¡±.

Almost a quarter (23 per cent) believe such submissions would probably go undetected, with 4 per cent regarding detection as ¡°very unlikely¡±.

Despite concerns about academic misconduct, the vast majority of students say they use AI for more straightforward learning support.

Four in five (81 per cent) AI-using students employ it ¡°to explain concepts that I wanted to understand better¡±, while more than half (52 per cent) use it to suggest improvements to their own work.

Other common applications include summarising sources (69 per cent) and identifying relevant reading (55 per cent).

The?5 per cent of AI users who submitted entirely AI-generated work without editing is matched by the?5 per cent who say such behaviour is acceptable.

The same pattern holds for generating and then editing AI-produced work (12-13 per cent) and creating sections of graded work (19-20 per cent).

However, YouGov¡¯s findings suggest that many students who engage in questionable practices are also aware that their behaviour is not acceptable.

Between 41 and 58 per cent of students who have used AI to create graded work in one of these ways also said it was an unacceptable use of the technology.

By contrast, students are far more comfortable with AI being used as a support tool rather than a replacement for their own work.

Almost four in five (78 per cent) say it is acceptable to use AI to suggest improvements to work they have already written, while 58 per cent approve of its use in creating content for non-graded tasks such as presentations.

The survey also highlights how deeply AI has embedded itself in student life more broadly.

Almost three-quarters (74 per cent) of respondents say they use AI for any purpose, not just academic, with a third (34 per cent) doing so at least weekly.

For academic purposes specifically, 33 per cent say they use AI at least once a week.

tash.mosheim@timeshighereducation.com