Packback generates an Originality Fingerprint for writing assignments (Deep Dive or Originality Review), which can be viewed by educators after an assignment is submitted. Depending on the settings for your assignment, you may be able to view the Originality Fingerprint prior to submitting your assignment. If you do not have access, ask your educator about it. They may be able to turn it on.
The Originality Fingerprint contains the following two indicators:
- Uniqueness
- AI Risk
The Uniqueness indicator represents the percentage of your content that is not matched to other sources. Packback checks external sources (found anywhere on the web) and internal sources (content from previously submitted Packback assignments). Learn more about it here.
The AI Risk level represents the likeliness that your content was written by generative AI. Packback’s algorithm examines word choice and sequence in the student’s text to produce this risk report. Humans tend to write with more ‘surprising’ words than AI, which follows a statistical pattern when generating text. Learn more about it here.
The two indicators (Uniqueness and AI Risk) are determined independently. This means that you could have a high Uniquess indicator (few matches detected) and a moderate or high AI Risk indicator (higher chance of AI-generated text) or vice versa. AI-generated text is not published, so it would not appear in a scan of existing sources.
Where do I find the Originality Fingerprint?
The Originality Fingerprint is not currently available for students to view in Deep Dives assignments, but this feature will be added soon!
When submitting Originality Review assignments, you can view your Originality Fingerprint on the assignment draft and submission pages.
You can also view a snapshot of your Uniqueness and AI Risk indicators on the assignment page after you start a draft.
What can I do with the Originality Report?
Within the Originality Fingerprint, you can view details about any matched sources and an explanation for your AI Risk level. Expanding a matched source section will reveal the exact portion of text from the source that matched content from your assignment. It also shows how many replacements, additions, and/or deletions you may have made from that source. By clicking “View side-by-side comparison,” a pop-up will display your text alongside the matched source to reveal the similarities.