07/30/2026
A college professor caught 32 out of 35 students cheating on their midterm by putting a prompt in white font.
Dr. Jason Gibson, a history professor at Alcorn State University, suspected his students were relying on generative artificial intelligence, so he devised an ingenious trap.
Within his digital midterm instructions about the Industrial Revolution, Gibson embedded a secret sentence written in a white font that blended into the page. To the human eye, the text was invisible, but students who blindly copied and pasted the prompt into AI platforms unknowingly included the hidden directive.
The secret instruction commanded the AI to insert the word 'Madagascar' into its response in a way that made absolutely no sense.
The trap was a massive success, exposing 32 of his 35 students across two classes when they submitted essays featuring bizarre, nonsensical references to Madagascar.
The professor expressed frustration not just at the plagiarism, but at the complete lack of oversight, as students failed to read over the chatbot's work before submission. Gibson shared the results, sparking a broader conversation about academic integrity and the creative, 'cat-and-mouse' methods educators must now use to combat modern cheating.
source: Landymore, F. (2026). Professor Hides White Font in Midterm, Catches Students Using AI. Futurism.
