The publisher of a controversial image used in Tuesday’s HSC English exam has confirmed that the stimulus was generated by artificial intelligence, following days of suspicion from students and educators.
The NSW Education Standards Authority used the image to help students answer a question about human experiences. The image showed a pristine river on a laptop, which sits on a wooden bench next to two smartphones and a coffee mug, and overlooking a similarly pristine river.
The stimuli used in Tuesday’s HSC exam, which publisher Florian Schroeder confirms is AI generated.Credit: Florian Schroeder/Medium
The image was published by Florian Schroeder, a German-based AI professional, on the blogging site Medium in July last year.
Schroeder confirmed to the Herald that the image was AI-generated. “It is very nice to see that the image is used all the way in Australia,” he said. “If the image is suitable for the exam, why not use it?”
Schroeder made the image through the OpenAI programs ChatGPT and Dall-E 2, using voice prompts to form the illustration used in Tuesday’s HSC exam.
Students were asked in a short answer question to compare Schroeder’s image with an unrelated passage of writing about a farm, as part of a section evaluating responses to the depiction of human experiences through the provided stimuli.
The image drew immediate suspicion of AI use from students, who pointed to irregularities in the illustration of the coffee mug handle and wires to suggest it may be AI-generated.
NESA declined to confirm if AI was used to create the image earlier in the week.
After learning from the Herald that the image was AI generated, NESA said: “We want to reassure students that they were asked to respond to the question using the image, not the origin of the image, nor its construction. They will be marked on how they responded to the question.”
Sydney University lecturer Armin Chitizadeh, who formerly ran UNSW’s artificial intelligence course, didn’t “see an issue, per se” with using the image in the exam but he did raise concerns about a failure to attribute the use of AI.
“It can be a good exercise [analysing AI-generated content] for a student to try before they go into the real world, where they might face the same issues,” Chitizadeh said.
“But the biggest thing is even if we have a student use anything AI-related, it needs to be mentioned that it’s been used.”
NESA had contacted Schroeder to seek permission for the stimulus to be published on its website for future students to analyse, but it was yet to hear back from him.
NESA’s academic policies say the unapproved use of AI by students in assessment tasks constitutes a breach of academic integrity, saying all submitted work must be completed by a student or acknowledged properly.
All school leavers were forced to complete a compulsory anti-plagiarism module, which included lessons on the ethical use of AI, before starting the HSC.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.