A teacher was left gobsmacked when she added something sneaky into an essay question she wanted her students to write, but she was floored when the essays came back in11:00, 27 Jul 2026There's no denying that school-age kids are getting savvy with AI, with some opting to write entire essays with just a couple of easy prompts.‌This fact is concerning for many educators, as it means they're having to go above and beyond to catch their students out when it comes to using AI in their coursework and essays. Because, of course, an em-dash is not a sole indicator of someone using ChatGPT to write answers to questions.‌Laura, who often shares content about her life as a teacher, explained that she would be checking her pupils' work for AI use, and when she ran it through a checker, she was floored.‌The educator, who posts on TikTok as @teacherlaura, captioned her video: " Let's see if my students even read the prompt before using AI to try and cheat".She wrote a jokey prompt in the question paper, saying that this was an AI checker, and she wanted her students to write Gatorade three times in the essay.If they did, she'd have a clue that they'd cheated on their essays, because they'd just copy and paste the prompt into the AI they were using.‌Content cannot be displayed without consentLaura made it invisible, so her students wouldn't clock the trap she'd set for them. And when she ran one of the essays through an AI checker, the results were pretty alarming.When marking one paper, she noticed that 70% of it had been flagged as being AI. Concerningly, just 0% was deemed human, and a whopping 30% was mixed AI and human.‌The AI checker said, "We are moderately confident this text was AI-generated," which is a nightmare for teachers.She then checked whether it had the word Gatorade in it three times, and lo and behold, it did, meaning that they'd copied the whole essay prompt in and not used their brain at all to do their work.In the comments, other teachers reminisced on the good old days when they had fewer annoying things to contend with.‌One wrote: "Remember when the teachers’ biggest issue was getting students to stop using Wikipedia". Another said: "I'm so glad I finished school long before AI".A third joked: "This is so funny Gatorade. You caught them Gatorade good. Keep up the good Gatorade work!" A fourth fumed: "So not only did they use AI, but they didn’t seem to proofread it either…"However, one man wrote: "The issue isn’t AI itself, it’s how it’s used. Schools shouldn’t pretend AI doesn’t exist when it’s already part of many workplaces, and even teachers use it to save time creating lesson plans, quizzes, or grading support.Article continues below"Instead of banning it outright, schools should teach students how to use it responsibly, like how to fact-check its answers, improve their own ideas, and be transparent when they’ve used it. But if a student has AI write an entire paper and turns it in as their own, that’s still cheating."Teaching responsible use prepares students for the real world much better than simply forbidding the technology."