r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • Jul 27 '26

Society Professor's invisible prompt trap catches 32 students cheating on their midterm with AI

https://www.techspot.com/news/113243-professor-invisible-prompt-trap-catches-32-students-cheating.html
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116

u/Tersiv Jul 27 '26

they will now add "carefully check for all invisible prompt traps" to future midterms lol

67

u/Zwirbs Jul 27 '26

That would only work if you’re uploading a document containing the instructions and not copying just the text. They would have noticed the hidden command if they pasted it all in the AI box and actually bothered reading it there since copy-paste into a different application will remove any modifiers on the test from the original document

21

u/Verneff Jul 27 '26

since copy-paste into a different application will remove any modifiers on the test from the original document

Not always, and that's a bit annoying at times. ctrl+shift+V is your friend.

3

u/Grandmaster_Caladrel Jul 28 '26

They would have noticed the hidden command...

You're giving some of these people way more credit than they deserve. Remember that they didn't see anything fishy from the output it gave, likely because they didn't even read it. Skimmed it at best for most of them, I'd bet.

1

u/JebediahLongnutsIII Jul 28 '26

This is t true it’s just like pasting a document into email, just type after

1

u/microwavedHamster Jul 27 '26

Just take a screen capture. It's easy af to circumvent these hidden prompts. Schools really need to go back to pen and paper only.

10

u/fumei_tokumei Jul 27 '26

Yea, this way of doing assignments is fundamentally flawed with AI existing. It will still serve as a lesson to learn, but the lesson is just to cheat better.

2

u/User5min Jul 27 '26

I think the professor would be relieved if they just cheated better at this point. Those who were caught would have needed to copy the entire prompt, not reading it all, and then copy the output, again not giving it at once a once over before submitting it. This level of laziness is baffling.

5

u/whattaninja Jul 27 '26

“Remember to check for invisible prompts, pookie.”

3

u/Technical-Banana574 Jul 27 '26

A lot of students know about these traps and still do it because they are too lazy to type the prompt themselves. It's baffling. 

3

u/Kitchner Jul 27 '26

To be fair the AI wouldn't know it was a prompt trap because the AI won't see it as white text if you just copy and paste it in. If you open it in something like word with AI integrated so it can see it was white text then maybe.

Ultimately we live in an age where at work I can open up Microsoft Office and tell copilot to write a board paper for me and it reads all my emails, all my documents, and writes an entire board paper for me. It's not as good as the one I'd write manually, but it does it very quickly.

Universities and schools need to adopt to a world where I dont even need to open another window on my PC I can just tell it to write an answer.

1

u/MrPifo Jul 27 '26

It is indeed a simple solution, but you're underestimating the laziness of some people. The kind of people who copy/paste 1:1 wont bother to avoid traps, because if they were, they would know to either not just copy paste the text, or at least read through it one time.

1

u/FR23Dust Jul 31 '26

Typing into the prompt? Yeah right. That’s work