Wake County student speaks before school board after she says she was falsely accused of using AI to cheat

Green Hope High School freshman Eleanor Canina spoke before the Wake County Board of Education on Tuesday night. She said she was falsely accused of using generative AI to complete an English assignment. Now, she is spearheading a Change.org petition.
Posted 5/6/2026, 1:02:00 AM Updated 5/6/2026, 2:00:06 AM

And our first student speaker

Good evening and welcome to the podium

Uh hello

My name is Eleanor Kaina and I'm a current student

at Green Hope High School

I was recently accused of using AI on an assignment

which I did not

This experience made me realize the growing prevalence of the

issue

Students being accused of using AI on their work when

they didn't

Needs to be treated as a real concern

I understand that this is uncharted territory

There are absolutely students who are using AI to cheat

on their assignments and teachers are doing their best to

navigate the circumstances

But false accusations along with being incredibly unfair cause a

great deal of stress for students

Students in this situation don't have an easy way of

responding

As such I think protections need to be put in

place for students to prevent these false accusations

Teachers should not be able to accuse students of using

AI without a conversation first and grades should not be

put in based on assumptions like occurred in my particular

experience

One major cause of these false accusations is the usage

of AI detectors

These AI detectors have been proven to give both false

positives and false negatives

They are agreed on by experts to not be suited

to be used as sole evidence against students

Rules need to be put in place to protect students

from accusations backed up by these technologies

I also think it would be worthwhile to consider the

privacy concerns associated with these AI detectors

Random detectors found online by teachers do not ensure that

the data or writing input will not be stored or

used to train AI models

Students should not have to be having their work submitted

into the software without permission

Ultimately this is a complicated situation and there isn't one

clear solution

However it's important to start making policy and above all

else consulting students in the process

Students are the ones directly affected by the situation and

can offer important insight on how their work should be

judged

Uh thank you for the time

Thank you and I'm gonna see if Doctor Robinson or

Doctor Hill is actually going to speak with you regarding

your concern

So Doctor Hill will join you

On one side um great thank you sorry for that

confusion

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