--- title: "Professor Hides White Font in Midterm, Catches Students Using AI in the Stupidest Way Possible" description: "A professor used white font to hide instructions to throw off students using an AI chatbot to cheat on their midterm." date: "2026-07-25" modified: "2026-07-25" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/future-society/professor-hides-white-font-ai-cheating" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Education" - "Future Society" --- # Professor Hides White Font in Midterm, Catches Students Using AI in the Stupidest Way Possible ![A color-treated photograph of a young male student reacting with shock to a failing grade on his paper.]() *Shutterstock / Futurism* Who could've guessed that students who use AI to cheat on their assignments are incredibly lazy? Jason Gibson, a history professor at Alcorn State University in Mississippi, says that he used white font to hide a prompt telling an AI model to spew nonsense in the instructions for his mid-term. Unfortunately, it ended up working a little too well. "Thirty-two of my 35 students between two classes failed a portion of their midterm because they all used AI to generate their entire response," he [explained in a viral TikTok](), sounding incredulous. "And apparently they didn't proofread it." The hidden prompt told the AI to sneak in random digressions about Madagascar. The midterm, by the way, was about the Industrial Revolution. And apparently none of the indolent cheats put in the bare modicum of effort required to at least check if what the AI wrote made any sense at all. All they did was copy-paste the midterm instructions into a chatbot, then copy-paste the chatbot's spiel back into the answer window. Gibson shared some of the most examples in a [follow-up video](). After introducing how AI and other technologies have impacted society, for instance, one midterm included this puzzling non sequitur: "Madagascar floats sideways through the afternoon." ("Okay," Gibson says, after a pause.) Another droned on about something related to AI and social inequality, followed by: "Madagascar purple bicycle whispers to the ceiling." An observation about AI automation was unceremoniously closed with how the island nation "wore a toaster to a basketball game," he also shared. And social media's impact on the world was compared to a "long journey to Madagascar." Gibson makes it clear that humiliating his students wasn't the point. He says he fully explained how he caught them afterwards, and that he gave the students an opportunity to contest their grade. (Only two did, showing at least that they do feel shame.) "I get no gratification out of seeing students fail. It's not my intent to see you fail — that's weird," he said. He definitely isn't the only educator going through similar tribulations. Teachers and professors across the country are constantly complaining that their pupils are using AI to generate essays and cheat on tests. One Brown University professor discovered that [over half his students were using AI to cheat on an exam](), and Princeton University has even [dropped its over century-old Honor Code tradition]() by forcing exams to be supervised after being mired in its own chatbot cheating scandal. "We don't know best practices for navigating academia with AI," Gibson warned. "We're all just trying to hold onto some level of academic integrity in the process." **More on AI:** [*Law School Bans Laptops and Phones as AI Cheating Scandal Grows*]() ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()