38% of Students Edit AI-Generated Content: StudyAgent Research Says
38% of Students Edit AI-Generated Content: StudyAgent Research Says
A concise look at why many students feel pressured to rewrite AI-generated drafts, from unclear sources to inconsistent details, and how expert insight explains the growing caution around these tools.
Dec 4, 2025
Research
5 min read
Table of contents
Key Takeaways
- 38% of students edit AI-generated content in a separate file before submitting.
- Another 33% use AI only to understand the topic. Only 2% submit unedited AI text.
- 84% of students prefer ChatGPT for academic support.
- 22% and 23.3% report accuracy issues in ChatGPT and Gemini, and 51.4% say Grammarly often gives unnecessary or incorrect suggestions.
Artificial intelligence has become part of everyday student work. It now supports tasks that range from understanding difficult readings to improving the clarity of a paragraph. Many students do not treat AI as a shortcut but as an extra layer of guidance that helps them process information and produce more organized writing. Even so, concerns about accuracy and the quality of suggestions shape how these tools are used in practice.
This StudyAgent survey looks closely at how students interact with AI while completing academic assignments. It highlights how they review AI-generated results, which tools they trust, and how they handle errors when they appear. The goal is to offer a clear picture of the habits forming around AI in education today. These findings show that AI is becoming a normal part of study routines, yet students continue to take an active role in checking, editing and refining the output before it becomes part of their final work.
Methodology
The survey was conducted on the Prolific research platform and collected responses from 2,365 participants. All respondents were verified students based in the United States who reported active use of AI chatbots for academic purposes. The study accepted participants using mobile, tablet, or desktop devices to reflect typical access patterns. Data collection took place in November 2025.
Only students who met the screener criteria such as current enrollment, U.S. location, and prior experience with AI tools, were included. This approach ensured that the results reflect the habits of learners who already work with AI in their academic routines.
Main Insights from the Study
The survey results show that a small group of tools dominates the academic routines of most students. ChatGPT is the most widely used, with 84% of respondents relying on it for reading support, drafting, editing, or clarifying difficult concepts. Its availability, speed, and flexible output make it the central tool in many study workflows.
The second most common tool is Grammarly, used by 56% of students. Many rely on it for grammar checks, tone adjustments, and structural polishing. However, students also report that Grammarly occasionally suggests changes that feel overly formal or unnatural.
In third place is Google Gemini, used by 46% of students. Learners often turn to it for quick explanations or alternative reasoning, though some mention inconsistent accuracy or vague responses.
Other tools play a smaller role in daily study habits. Claude (17%), QuillBot (15%), and Brainly (13%) attract niche groups of users, often for specific needs such as rewriting, solving math problems, or accessing community-generated answers. Tools like Photomath, Wolfram Alpha, and Gauth fall into similar categories of targeted use, each serving a focused academic task rather than a broad one.
How Students Work With AI-Generated Results
The data also shows that students do not place full trust in AI output. Instead, they take active steps to control the quality of the work they produce. The most common habit is editing AI-generated content in a separate file, which 38% of respondents do before submitting academic work. Students treat AI as a starting point rather than a final product, and they prefer to re-shape the result in Word, Google Docs, or similar tools.
Another 33% of students do not submit AI-generated text at all. They use AI only to understand the topic, summarize complex readings, or explore ideas before writing independently.
Only 2% of students submit AI-generated work without editing. This shows that direct copy-and-paste use is rare and that students maintain a cautious approach to AI-assisted writing.
What Comes Next in the Research
The survey results suggest a clear pattern: students value AI tools but do not rely on them without verification. Accuracy concerns, lack of reliable sources, and overly long or vague responses are common challenges. In the next sections, we will look more closely at why students hesitate to trust AI output and what specific issues they encounter when reviewing the responses these tools generate.
Why 38% of Students Edit AI Answers Before Submitting
- Accuracy issues (22.0%), limited file support (17.6%), and verbose replies (10.1%) often require corrections when using ChatGPT. Students add that it “can’t access real-time info” and is “too wordy.”
- More students report accuracy issues (23.3%) when using Gemini than with ChatGPT. Others note file limitations (9.3%) and vague or incomplete answers, which forces additional verification.
- Over half of users (51.4%) say Grammarly offers unnatural or overly formal suggestions, leading to further manual editing.
- Students note difficulty obtaining accurate sources, unclear references, and the need to fact-check AI-generated citations.
- Some tools push their own solutions, provide redundant information, or require students to extract useful content from long responses.
- Students report fact hallucinations, robotic tone, and responses that need heavy rewriting to fit academic style.
Final Summary
Students remain cautious with AI because the risks now feel personal. Universities enforce strict academic-integrity rules, AI detection tools are inconsistent, and many assignments require verifiable sources that generic AI responses often fail to provide. A single inaccurate fact, mismatched citation, or machine-like paragraph can trigger plagiarism checks or lower a grade.
As a result, 38% of students end up copying the AI-generated text into a separate file to rewrite it manually. They spend extra time fixing tone, checking sources, replacing vague claims with real evidence and making sure the final draft reads like genuine student work, not automated output.
Here’s how one of our experts explains the issue:
“Students don’t avoid AI because they fear the technology but because they fear the consequences. Without careful editing, AI responses can break academic standards, so students spend just as much time correcting them as they would writing from scratch.” — Timur Tugushev, Market Research Analyst at StudyAgent.
Sources:
- The research is based on an internal survey of the StudyAgent team, conducted in collaboration with 2,365 students.
