Success Story
How Writopia Lab Tackled AI in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards
The Challenge:
Protecting the Authenticity of Student Voices
Writopia Lab serves as an affiliate of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards across three regions, overseeing the adjudication of 5,809 written entries submitted by students in grades 7—12. The process for evaluating this level of student submissions involves coordinating a team of over a hundred volunteer readers to ensure each submission is scored fairly, generating an ultimate score after multiple reviewers have assessed each one. With the explosion of generative AI, Writopia Lab discovered that AI-generated work posed a sudden threat to the integrity of this 100+-year-old creative writing institution. The challenge was to find a way to review hundreds of submissions and assess their creative authenticity.
The Solution:
Leveraging Copyleaks for Judging the Submissions
Writopia Lab integrated Copyleaks into the adjudication workflow to scan 274 student submissions for entry into the competition. The Copyleaks platform identified that 33% of the submissions contained AI. In line with Writopia’s rigorous evaluation process, human judges further reviewed these essays, and 47 were determined to be ineligible. By implementing Copyleaks, Writopia provided a level playing field for all submissions to be evaluated and completed the high-volume screening process.
Background
Writopia Lab serves as an affiliate of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards across the DC, Hudson to Housatonic, and San Francisco regions. In this capacity, the organization manages the adjudication of thousands of student submissions, coordinating a vast network of volunteer readers who ensure at least two people score every piece. As generative AI became more accessible, Writopia Lab faced an unprecedented threat to the integrity of these prestigious awards. The primary obstacle was the sheer volume of submissions, coupled with the technical difficulty of identifying synthetic, unoriginal submissions. Reviewing hundreds of suspicious written works manually was not a viable option for a nonprofit staff already managing thousands of entries. Without Copyleaks, the organization had no way to verify the authenticity of students’ work, potentially allowing ineligible AI-generated content to waste volunteer judges’ time and unfairly compete against original, creative submissions.
The Process
To address these concerns, Writopia Lab integrated Copyleaks into its evaluation workflow. The organization identified 274 works that required deeper scrutiny and ran them again through the platform. The platform allowed the team to quickly and accurately identify 91 submissions as AI-written, providing a sophisticated level of analysis that would have been impossible to achieve manually. To uphold the highest standards of the awards, the team utilized these insights as the foundation for a secondary human expert review, ultimately confirming the disqualification of 47 submissions. This seamless integration of data-driven detection and professional judgment enabled the organization to handle a high-volume screening process with precision, safeguarding the competition from unoriginal submissions.
The Impact
The implementation of Copyleaks enabled Writopia Lab to complete a mission-critical task that was previously beyond its operational capacity. By identifying and removing 47 AI-generated entries, the organization preserved the fairness of the competition and ensured that awards were reserved for students who demonstrated authentic creativity and original writing. Beyond the numbers, Copyleaks served as a vital resource for the nonprofit’s limited staff, helping them address the rise of AI in creative writing. The most significant impact was protecting the volunteer readers’ time, ensuring their expertise was focused on nurturing and celebrating real human creativity.
Without Copyleaks, we simply wouldn’t have been able to attempt this kind of review. It allowed us to complete a process we had no other way of completing with our limited resources.
Looking Forward
Moving forward, Writopia Lab plans to shift Copyleaks use to an earlier stage in the submission and review process. By screening for AI earlier, the organization can disqualify ineligible work before it ever reaches the volunteer reading committees, significantly reducing wasted effort. However, Writopia Lab remains committed to a balanced approach, continuing to use the software as a flagging system rather than an automated judge. This ensures that while technology handles the heavy lifting of detection, human experts make the final determination, preserving the prestige of the 100+-year-old institution for creative teens.