essay bar ai

The world’s leading AI platform for teachers to grade essays

EssayGrader is an AI powered grading assistant that gives high quality, specific and accurate writing feedback for essays. On average it takes a teacher 10 minutes to grade a single essay, with EssayGrader that time is cut down to 30 seconds. That's a 95% reduction in the time it takes to grade an essay, with the same results.

How we've done

Happy users

Essays graded

EssayGrader analyzes essays with the power of AI. Our software is trained on massive amounts of diverse text data, including books, articles and websites. This gives us the ability to provide accurate and detailed writing feedback to students and save teachers loads of time. We are the perfect AI powered grading assistant.

EssayGrader analyzes essays for grammar, punctuation, spelling, coherence, clarity and writing style errors. We provide detailed reports of the errors found and suggestions on how to fix those errors. Our error reports help speed up grading times by quickly highlighting mistakes made in the essay.

Bulk uploading

Uploading a single essay at a time, then waiting for it to complete is a pain. Bulk uploading allows you to upload an entire class worth of essays at a single time. You can work on other important tasks, come back in a few minutes to see all the essays perfectly graded.

Custom rubrics

We don't assume how you want to grade your essays. Instead, we provide you with the ability to create the same rubrics you already use. Those rubrics are then used to grade essays with the same grading criteria you are already accustomed to.

Sometimes you don't want to read a 5000 word essay and you'd just like a quick summary. Or maybe you're a student that needs to provide a summary of your essay to your teacher. We can help with our summarizer feature. We can provide a concise summary including the most important information and unique phrases.

AI detector

Our AI detector feature allows teachers to identify if an essay was written by AI or if only parts of it were written by AI. AI is becoming very popular and teachers need to be able to detect if essays are being written by students or AI.

Create classes to neatly organize your students essays. This is an essential feature when you have multiple classes and need to be able to track down students essays quickly.

Our mission

At EssayGrader, our mission is crystal clear: we're transforming the grading experience for teachers and students alike. Picture a space where teachers can efficiently and accurately grade essays, lightening their workload, while empowering students to enhance their writing skills. Our software is a dynamic work in progress, a testament to our commitment to constant improvement. We're dedicated to refining and enhancing our platform continually. With each update, we strive to simplify the lives of both educators and learners, making the process of grading and writing essays smoother and more efficient.We recognize the immense challenges teachers face – the heavy burdens, the long hours, and the often underappreciated efforts. EssayGrader is our way of shouldering some of that load. We are here to support you, to make your tasks more manageable, and to give you the tools you need to excel in your teaching journey.

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hackthe.bar

hackthe.bar helps you learn the key concepts of 500+ black-letter rules more quickly and effectively than flashcards .

Property Easement

Or try one of these top rules: Easement , Nuisance , Offer , Acceptance , Hearsay , Burglary , State Action , Rational Basis , Strict Scrutiny or Negligence

How it works

Think of hackthe.bar as supercharged flash cards. This tool tests your knowledge of the key elements and terms of each rule tested on the Bar Exam. It uses AI and natural-language techniques to gauge whether you've stated the core concepts.

Instead of simply reading, typing out the rules and matching them with the essential keywords reinforces your understanding, enabling you to formulate concise and precise rule statements just like you'll need to do on test day.

Know what you know. Understanding the black letter rules cold is essential to applying them on the Bar Exam. I built this app during the intense final weeks leading up to the California Bar Exam, and it proved invaluable in helping me memorize the BLL for every subject.

Trusted by thousands of students from top law schools

Why it's awesome

↗ Concise and memorizable rule statements

↗ Battle-tested rule statements

↗ Better issue-spotting

↗ Free to try more than 30 rules

Work smarter, not harder

Toggle between study mode and quiz mode to see the rule and optimize your time.

Customize your rules

Learned a different phrasing for nuisance ? No problem - customize rules to your liking!

Track your progress

Identify gaps in your knowledge in the final weeks before the exam.

What others are saying

"Probably the most helpful tool I’ve come across so far seriously. The only thing that’s helped me ~actually~ memorize."

“This just made my day!”

“This is awesome and just what I needed!”

"I am learning black letter law the way I never knew before this. I recommend this for anyone trying to memorize BLL."

"Hole-e-****. This is amazing."

"This tool is making my key weakness crystal clear and gives me the opportunity to fix the problem."

"Really helped with my confidence for writing out rule statements for the MEE."

“Matching keywords was an excellent way to test/memorize. Sent the link to many of my friend groups and they all loved it..”

"I loved it. So simple and easy to use. Great rule statements. And the statements even included the rule exceptions and other tricky issues."

"Thanks so much for creating this very helpful tool!! It fills a niche that other bar prep programs don't have and was most helpful for prepping for the MEE."

All multistate topics, including:

Premium subscribers may customize and create their own topics.

Bar exams that use the Multistate Essay Examination (MEE), which includes all jurisdictions that follow the Uniform Bar Examination (UBE) format.

500+ of the most important rules, vetted and updated regularly for accuracy. Upgrade to customize and create your own rules.

Yes, our rules have been vetted by thousands of top law students for accuracy and are constantly compared with leading bar prep materials for consistency. However, there can be variations in the precise wording of legal rules. If you spot something that doesn't look right, let us know! If you find an error that needs correction, you may be eligible for a $5 rebate under our Legal Eagle Bounty program!

No! But having a solid grasp of the law and quickly articulating the key terms and elements is crucial for applying rules to given fact patterns. Hackthe.bar is designed specifically for this purpose. Once you master the rules, the analysis falls naturally into place.

Throughout bar prep to help learn the rules and exceptions, and especially during the final 3-4 weeks before the exam.

Definitely! It's designed to supplement traditional bar prep courses to boost your recall and understanding.

We use a custom-trained language model focused on concise and accurate black letter law rule statements. We constantly improve its accuracy with user feedback.

Yes, it's coming soon! Our native iOS app will be available in the coming months.

Yes, we use Stripe for secure payment processing. We do not store your card information. Stripe ensures bank-level security standards.

Yes, you will receive an email receipt from Stripe after payment.

Yes, all of your content remains private and secure. Our system protects your data from unauthorized access.

Yes, you can cancel anytime. You may be eligible for a refund if you cancel within 7 days of purchase and haven’t accessed more than 25% of the rules. Please review our Terms of Service and Refund Policy for details. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us!

Work smarter with hackthe.bar!

• 30+ demo rule statements
• 13+ MEE topics
• Top-50 most tested rules
• Custom topics and rules
• Saved rules
• Personalized tracking
• Access to new features

No credit card required!

• 500+ rule statements
• Early access to new features

Lifetime Access

• All of the above for life!

Ace Your Bar Exam with AI Essay Grading

Instant, detailed feedback to help you perfect your bar exam essays.

Get Started --> Get Started

Instant Feedback

Receive scores and feedback in seconds, not days.

Detailed Analysis

Understand your strengths and weaknesses with comprehensive feedback.

Actionable Insights

Get specific recommendations to improve your essay writing.

Only $15 per month, a cost-effective supplement to traditional bar prep courses.

Why can't I just use ChatGPT for my bar exam essays?

BarScoreAI is trained on proprietary materials backed by 25 years of bar exam expertise. This ensures tailored feedback and scoring that general AI models like ChatGPT cannot provide. Unlike ChatGPT, which can sometimes generate incorrect or fabricated information, BarScoreAI provides reliable insights based on real bar exam materials.

How can I trust the accuracy of the feedback and scores?

Our tool is built on decades of bar exam preparation experience and is continually refined to reflect the latest exam standards. The feedback and scoring are designed to align closely with actual bar exam evaluation criteria.

What type of feedback can I expect from BarScoreAI?

You will receive a comprehensive analysis of your essay, highlighting strengths, areas for improvement, missed points, and actionable insights to help you enhance your writing.

How quickly will I receive my essay score and feedback?

Feedback is provided instantly, allowing you to quickly understand your performance and identify areas to focus on in your preparation.

Is BarScoreAI a replacement for traditional bar prep courses?

No, BarScoreAI is designed to complement traditional bar prep courses by providing additional, targeted feedback on your essay writing skills.

What is the cost of subscribing to BarScoreAI?

The subscription costs only $15 per month, making it an affordable supplement to your bar exam preparation.

Can I try BarScoreAI before subscribing?

Yes, we offer a trial period for new users to experience the benefits of our tool before being charged.

Let’s write better essays.

Ai co-writer that helps students research, write, paraphrase and cite. effortlessly..

Used by 230,000+ smart students from

Mighty but simple AI co-writer

Use the power of ChatGPT while keeping your unique voice and originality

Outline Generator

Not sure how to start? Litero AI will suggest an outline for your specific topic.

AI Autosuggest

Got writer's block? Litero AI will seamlessly suggest the next sentence or paragraph.

Citation tool

Add references and citations effortlessly in MLA, APA and other formats.

Built-in ChatGPT

We brought ChatGPT AI assistant right into your workflow. No more window switching.

Ideal for faster writing and better grades

Save time with our built-in tools every student needs for a perfect essay.

Plagiarism Detector

Check your text for plagiarism with accurate results.

Grammar Checker

Find and fix issues with grammar, spelling, punctuation, and more!

Easy export

Download your document in needed format: APA, MLA, etc

Try for free, upgrade anytime

• Instant access to all features
• Citation and references
• Grammar and plagiarism checker
• All AI commands
• Limited AI words per day
• Unlimited AI words
• Unlimited AI outline and draft helper
• Unlimited chat with AI assistant
• All AI comands

People love Litero. And talk about it.

Litero has an intuitive interface, which I like. Its autosuggestions elevated my papers to a whole new level. It's like having a personal writing mentor always at my side, guiding me toward clearer, more impactful expression.

David Brown

Georgetown University

Litero is my writing lifeline 📚✍️

Vikky Singh

Duke University

I never knew I needed Litero until I tried it for my homework. Now I use it at least 3 or 4 times a week to write faster.

Princeton University

Litero effortlessly handles issues with formatting, citations, and references, saving me hours of work on essays. Kudos to the team behind it!

Mason Wilson

University of Southern California

Big-big help with sources and adding references. I no longer need to worry about margins, citations - Litero helps me do it easier. I focus on the content of my papers, confident that the presentation will be top-notch. If you have some spare bucks the paid version is absolutely worth it.

Daniel Miller

Cornell University

Litero has become an essential instrument in my college life. Thank you for making my writing shine!

Emma Robinson

Washington University in St. Louis

As someone who strives for perfection in everything, Litero is a godsend. This tool helps me polish my academic writing to perfection, ensuring it meets the highest standards.

Stanford University

Discovering this tool is gold for my postgrad education. After trying the free version, I upgraded to the paid one, and I can't help but regret not using this writing AI earlier. It's the real deal!

University of Florida

Being a STEM student, I dread writing assignments and, frankly, anything connected to writing essays. Litero is perfect for me and anyone else with the same struggles.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Litero makes writing a breeze! A true lifesaver!

Ethan Mitchell

Rice University

I am all about efficient solutions and time-management. AI text tools from Litero streamline my studies. They help me improve my writing, saving me time and ensuring accuracy. Invaluable!

Nisha Reddy

Johns Hopkins University

I am glad I found Litero . It saved me so much time working on my articles and research with its smart and easy-to-use functionality. I'm impressed!

Chris Malkin

University of California, Berkeley

Securing a scholarship demands a high GPA and maintaining my high GPA is a top priority. I started using Litero and it helps me a lot with my homework.

Liam Anderson

Millenium high school

It's a game-changer for sure. I just can't believe how EASY it became to put my thoughts into writing: even when I have no idea how to start they have a tool for that! Litero 's been of great help so far and took a lot of stress away. Great AI tool for students.

Maria Robles

Boston University

EssayBar is a groundbreaking platform that harnesses the power of AI to transform your writing experience. With its AI-crafted essays, you can effortlessly enhance your writing skills, save time, and achieve remarkable results. Say goodbye to writer’s block and hello to limitless creativity with EssayBar!

EssayBar - Revolutionize Your Writing with AI-Crafted Essays!

EssayBar – Revolutionizing essay writing with AI-powered technology for high-quality, efficient, and effective writing.

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Description

"Generate top-quality essays effortlessly with EssayBar, an AI-powered tool that tailors custom essays to your needs. Craft accurate and one-of-a-kind content with AI technology and an auto-complete feature. Choose from two subscription plans and enjoy up to 100 essay generations per month."

About EssayBar

Welcome to EssayBar, the ultimate AI-powered tool designed to revolutionize the way you create essays. Whether you're a student with tight deadlines or a professional seeking top-quality content, EssayBar is here to make your life easier.

Our innovative tool harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to generate custom essays tailored to your specific needs and requirements. With EssayBar, you no longer have to struggle with writer's block or spend hours researching and organizing your thoughts. Our AI technology does the heavy lifting for you, providing you with relevant, one-of-a-kind, and accurate content that is sure to impress.

But that's not all. EssayBar comes packed with handy features that take your essay creation experience to the next level. Our auto-complete feature assists you in editing and enhancing your essay effortlessly. Specify your desired word count, and add additional words with just a few clicks. It's that simple!

At EssayBar, we believe in giving you options. Choose between our two subscription plans to find the one that perfectly suits your needs. Our monthly plan, priced at $3.99 per month, allows you to generate up to 100 essays each month. If you're looking for even more savings, our yearly plan comes at just $3.0 per month – a fantastic value that enables you to create unlimited essays for an entire year.

Transform Your Bar Exam Preparation

Instant feedback directly in your browser to enhance your essay writing skills and succeed on the bar exam.

Key Features

Explore the key functionalities that make Kaplan Instant Essay Grader an indispensable tool for your bar exam preparation.

Instant Feedback

Analyze your writing for key elements required in bar exam essays like argument structure, legal analysis, and factual application.

Thorough Evaluation of Every Issue

Evaluates essays for issue spotting, legal reasoning, and argument coherence — key components for bar exam success.

Skills Evaluation

Measures the mastery of essential legal skills, including Relevance and Prioritization, Organization and Style, Rule Recollection and Articulation, and Quality of Reasoning.

Customized Recommendations

Get personalized tips and suggestions for improving your essays, from refining rule statements to enhancing argument's clarity.

Seamless Integration

Works directly on the Kaplan Bar Review course platform, making it easy to incorporate instant feedback into your study routine.

State-Specific Scoring

Tailors feedback to the specific scoring criteria and legal standards of your state's bar exam, ensuring targeted and relevant evaluations.

Why Kaplan Instant Essay Grader?

Developed by experts with a focus on your improvement, providing you with the tools to enhance your bar exam preparation efficiently.

Detailed Analysis

Benefit from a granular breakdown of your essays. Our tool dives deep into every detail, offering comprehensive feedback on aspects like argument structure, legal analysis, and factual application, enabling a nuanced understanding of your writing.

Targeted Improvement

Leverage precise, tool provides insights to identify and refine specific areas needing enhancement. Our detailed critiques help improve your legal reasoning, issue spotting, and overall argument clarity.

Efficient Learning

Save valuable time with instant, detailed feedback. Accelerate your revision cycle and enhance your learning efficiency, allowing you to focus more on mastering the essentials of bar exam essays.

Getting Started Is Easy

Add the extension.

Add the Kaplan Instant Essay Grader extension to your browser from the Chrome Web Store or Firefox Add-ons.

Navigate to Course

Navigate to your Kaplan Bar Review course and start submitting your essays.

Receive Feedback

Receive instant feedback and begin improving your essay writing skills immediately.

Ready to transform your bar exam preparation?

EssayBar: Features, Reviews, Pricing

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Essaybar is an Artificial Intelligence tool that helps students and professionals generate high-quality essays effortlessly. It is a revolutionary tool that crafts custom essays tailored to specific needs and requirements. Users can choose their own topic, word count, and watch the AI work its magic. Essaybar also features an AI auto-complete feature that can help take essays to the next level. Price starts at $3.99 per month.

Pricing model:

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EssayBar is an AI-powered tool for generating top-quality essays. It provides students and professionals with an efficient and effortless way to create custom essays tailored to their specific needs and requirements. The tool leverages artificial intelligence technology to help users craft relevant, one-of-a-kind, and accurate content. It utilizes an auto-complete feature to edit and enhance the essay, allowing users to specify the desired word count and add additional words with just a few clicks. EssayBar is available in two subscription plans – a monthly plan for $3.99 per month with up to 100 generations/month and a yearly plan for $3.0 per month.

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AI for Essay Writing — Exploring Top 10 Essay Writers

Table of Contents

Let’s admit it — essay writing is quite a challenging task for students. Especially with the stringent deadlines, conducting research, writing , editing, and addressing to-and-fro reviews — consumes a whole lot of time and often becomes stressful. Therefore, students are always on the lookout for tools that speed up the essay writing process.

And that’s when AI writing tools make their debut! Using the best AI for essay writing makes the lives of students much easier by automatically generating the essay for them.

The rise in the popularity of artificial intelligence technology and deep learning has paved the way for the numerous AI writer tools available today. To help you understand the different types of AI tools and their benefits, we’ve uncovered the features of the top 10 AI essay generators in this article.

Let’s explore the tools and learn how they are transforming the tedious task of essay writing!

What is essay writing?

Essay writing is a part of academic writing that emphasizes formulating an idea or argument. The main objective of academic essay writing is to present a well-reasoned argument or idea. Evidence, analysis, and interpretation are the three major components of essay writing . It should have a logical structure to support the argument or idea of the essay so that it communicates clearly and concisely.

What is an AI essay writer?

AI essay writers is a tool that is designed to help students generate essays using machine learning techniques. They can be used to generate a full essay or generate a few parts of the essay, for example, essay titles, introduction, conclusion, etc.

Why should researchers use AI essay generators?

There are infinite benefits to using AI tools for writing unique essays, especially for researchers or students. Here are a few of them —

1. Saves time

Using best AI for essay writing has its own benefits. Students can take care of the research process while these AI tools write the essays for them. Be it an essay topic or a full-length essay generation, it saves a bunch of students' time.

2. Boosts productivity

Writing is a tedious task especially when you want to write an essay about a novel topic, that writer’s block starts haunting and your productivity gets affected. But, with AI, it’s the other way around and increases productivity by quickly generating the essays for you.

3. Enhances writing skills — Vocabulary and Style

Adopting the best AI essay writing AI tool not only help with creating essays but also help us hone our writing skills by giving proper suggestions about grammar, sentence structure, tone, style, and word choice.

4. Reduces stress

Students often undergo a lot of pressure and stress because of deadlines and submissions. With the best AI essay generator, they help you write essays smarter thereby reducing stress and fear in no time.

5. Facilitates multidisciplinary research

AI essay writing tools foster interdisciplinary study through their ability to scan and combine knowledge from multiple domains. That way, it helps us quickly get a grasp of new subjects or topics without a heavy-lifting process.

6. Cost-effective

Most of the AI essay writing tools have lower pricing and also allow certain discounts for students. So, it is also a cost-effective approach to use AI writing tools.

The Top AI Essay Writing Tools and Their Features

Several AI essay writers are available based on the types of essays one would want to generate. Now, let's quickly understand the top 10 AI writing tools that generate essays within just a few minutes.

1. PerfectEssayWriter.ai

It is one of the best AI for essay writing that not only creates an essay but also comes up with advanced features including plagiarism detection, auto-referencing, and contextual analysis. As a result, it generates coherent essays that are well-researched and properly cited. It is best recommended for creating academic essays and essay outlines.

How does PerfectEssayWriter work?

• Pick the right tool for your purpose — Go with an essay writer if you want to generate a full essay or choose the essay outliner if you want to create just the outline of the essay.
• Enter your specific conditions and preferences. Add essay topic, academic level, essay type, number of pages, and special instructions, if any.
• Click on “generate” and wait for the result
• Once you have the essay generated, you can review, edit, or refine it and then download it.
• Generates a large chunk of data up to 2000 words
• Output is provided within 90 seconds
• Provides a plethora of other tools like Citation generator, grammar checker, thesis statement generator, and more
• Comes with 10+ essay writing templates
• Subscription-based and not a free tool
• Human review is a mandate

2. Essaybot - Personalized AI writing

Essaybot is the product of a reputed online essay-writing service, MyPerfectWords. It is meant to enhance academic essay writing and streamline the tasks of students. Its user friendly website makes it an instant and hassle-free essay generation saving a lot of time and effort for students.

How does Essaybot work?

• Enter the essay title or topic
• Click on “start writing” and wait for it to generate a well-reasoned essay.
• The tools come for free
• No sign-up is required
• 100% unique and High-quality output
• Very limited features that lack advanced functionalities

3. FreeEssayWriter.net

FreeEssayWriter is an organization that provides essay-writing services to students worldwide. It has an AI essay typer tool — that helps you generate essays instantly. What sets this essay typer apart is its initiative to help students with their free essay writer providing the students with a 2-page free essay.

How does FreeEssayWriter.net work?

It works similarly to Essaybot, input the title or the topic of your essay and wait for it to generate the essay. They also have an option to edit and download a free version of the generated essay instantly.

• Provides high-quality essays and is considered to be one of the reliable and trusted sources of information
• Students can improve their writing skills and learn more about essays by referring to their free essay database or sources
• Priority customer support is available 24*7
• The site is not optimized for mobile devices
• The quality of the essay output could still be improved

4. MyEssayWriter

This AI essay writing tool is no exception in terms of generating a high-quality essay. You can generate essays for various topics depending on the background of your research study. Be it academic or non-academic essay writing, this tool comes in handy.

How does MyEssay Writer work?

Add your preferences and then click on generate. It will give you a high-quality and 100% unique essay crafted based on your requirements.

• The tool comes for free — no subscription is required
• Knows for its consistency in the quality and the tone of the essay output
• Also has a paid custom writing service that provides human-written essays
• Might not provide quality output for complex and technical-based keywords or topic

5. College Essay AI

College essay AI stands unique as an ai writing tool as it not only uses an AI-based algorithm to generate essays but it also backs up the output as it is reviewed and approved by a team of professional experts. It is the best AI essay writing tool for college and graduate students where the output adheres to the graduate students' essay writing guidelines.

How does the College Essay AI generator work?

• Input the required information — essay topic, academic level, number of pages, sources, and specific instructions, if any.
• Click on “generate essay” and wait for the output
• Conduct plagiarism and grammar check
• Download the essay
• High-level output for academic essay writing
• Pocket-friendly premium plans
• Doesn’t provide multiple sets of templates
• Not quite suitable for non-academic essay writing

6. Jasper AI

Jasper AI has been the oldest player in the game of AI content writing. Fast forward to now, its features have been magnified with the inception of natural language processing algorithms and that’s how they are helping students write their essays as well. However, Jasper is the best AI tool for non-academic writing projects like content writing or creative writing.

How does Jasper AI work?

• Choose a template — if you are about to write an essay, go with the “document”
• Add your preferences
• Click “compose” and get the output
• Generates the essays instantly
• Provides well-structured output according to the tone and style of your preferences
• Not quite suitable for academic writing essays

7. Textero AI

Textero AI provides a few writing tools for students that facilitate their various academic papers and writing projects. Its essay generator helps you generate ideas for a full-length essay based on the topic and also suggests new topic ideas or thesis statement ideas for your academic assignments.

How does Textero AI work?

• Click on “Essay Generator” located on the LHS (Left-hand Side)
• Input the title and description based on which you want to generate the essay
• Pick the right citation style
• Click “generate” and wait for the output
• It also provides other tools like an outline generator, and summary generator and has an AI research assistant that answers all your questions relevant to the research
• The output is 100% unique and plagiarism and error-free
• Might fail to provide an essay focussed on complex or technical topics

8. Quillbot

Though Quillbot is essentially built for paraphrasing and summarizing tasks. It comes as a rescue when you have to revamp, improvise, or refine your already-composed essay. Its co-writer helps you transform your thoughts and ideas and make them more coherent by rephrasing them. You can easily customize your text based on the customization options available.

How does Quillbot Paraphraser work?

• Import or copy the content
• Click on “Paraphrase” “Summarize” or “Suggest text” based on your requirement
• Make the required customizations and save the document.
• Offers a plethora of tools required for students
• Both free and premium plans are available
• Enhances vocabulary and language skills
• Limited customization options with the free plan
• Only supports the English language

9. SciSpace Paraphraser

SciSpace is the best AI tool that helps you fine-tune your essay. If you feel your essay writing needs AI suggestions to improve the language, vocabulary, writing styles, and tone of your essay, SciSpace is at your rescue. It has more customized options than Quillbot and improves your essay by rephrasing it according to the required or preferred writing style, and tone. This is a very good alternative to Quillbot.

How does SciSpace Paraphrasing work?

• Simply paste the content to the screen
• Choose the length and variation properly
• Select the language
• Click “Paraphrase”
• Has 22 custom tones and all of them are available even on the free plan
• Supports 75+ languages
• Comes with an AI-detection report for English paraphrase output
• Delay in the output

10. ChatGPT

It would be unfair if we talk about AI tools and do not enlist ChatGPT. When it comes to automated essay writing tasks, ChatGPT is not trivial. With proper prompts, you can automate the essay writing process and generate a well-crafted and coherent essay. However, the quality and the accuracy cannot be trusted as the model hallucinates and doesn’t include sources.

How does ChatGPT work?

• Create a prompt based on your requirement
• Ask ChatGPT to write an essay about your topic, specify conditions and preferences
• Click enter and wait for the essay
• Comes for free
• Cannot rely on the output as the model hallucinates
• Lacks the upgraded features that other essay-writing tools have

Concluding!

Writing essays can be a real struggle. But, the inception of the best AI essay-generation tools makes the entire writing process a lot easier and smoother. However, you should be extra vigilant while relying on these tools and consciously use them only as a technological aid. Because over-reliance on these AI tools could diminish student's writing skills and the user can become more gripped by the tools. So, use it wisely without affecting your knowledge and skills.

You can explore the above tools whenever you need any help with essay writing, and reap the benefits of them without compromising on the quality of your writing.

And! If you're stuck exploring multiple research papers or want to conduct a comprehensive literature review , you know which tool to use? Yes, it's SciSpace Literature Review, our AI-powered workspace, which is meant to make your research workflow easier. Plus, it also comes with SciSpace Copilot , our AI research assistant that answers any question that you may have about the research paper.

If you haven't used it yet, you can use it here !

Choosing the best AI for writing long-form essays depends on your requirements. Here are the top 5 tools that help you create long-form and college essays —

1. Free Essay Writer AI

2. College Essay AI

3. My Essay Writer

4. Textero AI

5. Perfect Essay Writer

The Perfect Essay Writer AI and Textero AI are the two best AI essay generators that help you write the best essays.

ChatGPT is not specifically built to assist you with essay writing, however, you can use the tool to create college essays and long-form essays. It’s important to review, fact-check the essay, and refer to the sources properly.

Essaybot is a free AI essay generator tool that helps you create a well-reasoned essay with just a click.

Unless your university permits it, using AI essay generators or writing tools to write your essay can be considered as plagiarism.

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I Tested Three AI Essay-writing Tools, and Here’s What I Found

Writing essays can be draining, tedious, and difficult, even for me—and I write all day long for a living. If writing isn’t your special skill, it’s even harder, which is why there are so many sites and products out there that are designed to help you get your homework done. Some of them are pretty unethical, and I’m not going to recommend hiring someone else to write your papers for you, but there are some cool AI tools that can give you a hand that are worth considering. (The essay-writing businesspeople are probably using these, too, so you’re better off eliminating the middleman and using them on your own.)

The best AI essay-helper tools

I have an essay due next week on the history and impact of a federal law, 21 U.S.C. S856, which outlaws the operation of any building where drugs are made or used. I won’t lie: I’m excited to work on it this weekend, but that’s just me. I tested out a few of the more popular AI essay-helper tools, pretending I wasn’t excited about it, to see how they worked. Here’s my assessment. 

First up was Grammarly , which prompted me to fill out a personalization quiz before I could use it. I told the site I was a grad student, interested in improving the vocabulary I use in my work, and looking to brainstorm topics for my essay. I used the text-input section to type a quick introductory paragraph and selected “Generative AI” from the list of options. When I hit the “Improve It” button, Grammarly showed me a revised version that added a bunch of words, but still said the same thing as my more concise entry. To me, that’s annoying, but if you’re trying to hit a word count, this could be useful. I was also given options like “Make it assertive,” “Make it persuasive,” and “Make it confident.” When I selected “Make it more detailed,” the generative AI did expand the information pretty significantly, but it didn’t add any citations and I’m not convinced it drew on material outside of what I inputted. When I hit “Make it persuasive,” the AI automatically assumed the bias should fall in favor of the law, but when I added more detail to my original paragraph, suggesting for argument’s sake that the law has curtailed efforts to reduce drug overdoses throughout the country, the AI assistant said, “Grammarly assistance is unavailable for this prompt because it may result in sensitive content.”

Overall, this wasn’t great for my needs, as my topic's content was too “sensitive” and the generative AI really only added a bunch of words. This one would be most useful for someone trying to hit a word count. 

Next I tested Cramly , which I hadn’t heard of before. Before upgrading to a $4/month plan, you do get to try five free prompts, so I pasted my basic intro paragraph in there and, after a few seconds, got five paragraphs in return. It was obvious the AI was pulling from external sources somehow, as it mentioned fines and prison sentences associated with the law that I hadn’t specified, but it didn’t actually cite those sources. Still, the information it provided was helpful, so this one would be great if you’re not sure how to frame or expand on a topic and need a general idea of what your essay could look like. You’ll just have to go through everything it spits back at you and look it up independently, finding solid sourcing. 

EssayGenius

EssayGenius is extremely easy to use. It asked me to type what I’m writing about into a box. I simply inputted the name of the law and, about 10 seconds later, got 10 paragraphs back, some with subheadings like “historical background” and “implications in criminal law and public policy.” Again, there were no citations here, but the service provided not only a lot of details that could be used as a springboard to find more, but a solid outline for what the paper could look like. The AI played both sides, objectively presenting the cases for and against the law, then provided a conclusion that made it easy to narrow down where to go with the topic. Impressively, I was able to generate all that for free, but if you want to write up to 10 essays per month, it’ll cost you $9.99 a month. 

Finally, I tried out JotBot , which I have seen advertised on social media. It asked me what I was writing about, plus if I wanted an outline, but also gave me an opportunity to upload my old essays so it could replicate my writing style. As scary as it was, the paragraphs it generated after reading some of my older work did sound more like me than standard AI does. It give me subtopic suggestions, like “impact,” “historical background,” and “controversies,” which I could select from a sidebar and, if I liked the paragraph it wrote, drag into the essay itself. From there, I could accept or reject sentences one by one as it generated new ones. I could write in the essay editing section, too, and it generated more suggestions based on what I was typing. Frankly, this one was really cool and I can see how it would help beat writer’s block with ease, since you can type and get suggestions as you go. There was a learning curve, though, and I didn’t realize how quickly I was blowing through my 10 free daily “credits,” since it’s unclear what, exactly, costs credits and how many it costs to, say, accept one suggestion. You can unlock unlimited credits, unlimited autocomplete, unlimited sources, and more for $14 per month. 

Conclusions

Overall, EssayGenius and JotBot were the best AI tools I tested. I was impressed by EssayGenius’s ability to research the topic on its own and JotBot’s mimicry of my own writing style. They do cost money, but that might be worth it if you’re someone who struggles with idea generation, outline creation, or getting into the flow of writing overall. 

Bear in mind these are not meant to churn out entire essays for you and you shouldn’t use them to do that. I don’t mean because it’s unethical, but I mean because it’s pretty easy for professors to catch you doing it . Even if you do use an AI tool to generate a whole paragraph or more, try to write it in your own voice and think of it more as a way to study and learn about your topic than have the writing done for you. 

Or, pay nothing and just use ChatGPT to generate outline ideas. I do that all the time and never have to worry about getting in trouble, cheating myself out of an education, or paying for anything. I just asked ChatGPT to generate an outline for an essay on 21 U.S.C. §856 and its impact on American harm reduction efforts and got eight sections, each with three subsections, and an easy roadmap I could follow to write my paper on my own. Doing it this way ensures I’ll actually research and learn about the topic, which is important to me, but also avoid the risk of going down for plagiarism or cheating, which is probably important to you. 

No matter what you end up doing, always run your work through a plagiarism checker (like Grammarly’s , which is better than its AI essay-writing tools) and ZeroGPT to make sure you’re not turning in something that’s going to get you in trouble.

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Promptchan AI

EssayBar is an AI-powered tool for generating top-quality essays. It provides students and professionals with an efficient and effortless way to create custom essays tailored to their specific needs and requirements. The tool leverages artificial intelligence technology to help users craft relevant, one-of-a-kind, and accurate content. It utilizes an auto-complete feature to edit and enhance the essay, allowing users to specify the desired word count and add additional words with just a few clicks. EssayBar is available in two subscription plans – a monthly plan for $3.99 per month with up to 100 generations/month and a yearly plan for $3.0 per month.

More details about EssayBar

How do i sign up for essaybar.

To sign up for EssayBar, a potential user can visit the website and click the ‘Sign up’ button to begin their registration.

Can I use EssayBar for free before subscribing?

Yes, the website of EssayBar has an option to ‘start writing for free’ before a user chooses to subscribe to one of their paid plans.

How does EssayBar work?

EssayBar works in three main steps: 1) Users choose a topic and specify the desired word count. 2) The tool utilizes AI technology to craft relevant, unique, and accurate content, essentially generating the essay itself. 3) Users can edit the produced essay, further enhancing it via AI auto-complete feature by specifying how many words they’d like to add.

Can EssayBar assist in selecting a topic for an essay?

Yes, EssayBar can assist in generating essay on any given topic. If the user needs topic ideas, ‘Dogs’ or ‘Importance of Trees’ are suggested examples.

Can EssayBar be used by both students and professionals?

Yes, EssayBar can be used by both students and professionals to create customized essays that meet their specific requirements.

Is EssayBar only available online?

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As AI-driven fakery spreads—from election-related robocalls and celebrity deepfake videos to doctored images and students abusing the powers of ChatGPT—a tech arms race is ramping up to detect these falsehoods.

But in higher ed, many are choosing to stand back and wait, worried that new tools for detecting AI-generated plagiarism may do more harm than good.

“Twenty-five years ago, you were grabbing at your student’s text saying, ‘I know this isn’t theirs,’” said Emily Isaacs, director of Montclair State University’s Office for Faculty Excellence. “You couldn’t find it [online], but you knew in your heart it wasn’t theirs.”

Montclair announced in November—a year after the launch of ChatGPT—that academics should not use the AI-detector feature in a tool from Turnitin. That followed similar moves from institutions including Vanderbilt University, the University of Texas at Austin and Northwestern University.

A big question driving these decisions is: Do AI-detection tools even work?

“It’s really an issue of, we don’t want to say you cheated when you didn’t cheat,” Isaacs said. Instead, she said, “Our emphasis has been raising awareness, mitigation strategies.”

Awareness of AI-driven falsehoods and the perils of plagiarism has skyrocketed. This week, Meta—parent company of Facebook and Instagram— announced it would label AI-generated images. That followed an uproar caused by fake, AI-generated pornographic images of singer Taylor Swift circulating online and AI-powered robocalls impersonating President Joe Biden that sought to suppress votes in the New Hampshire primary. The Federal Communications Commission outlawed such AI robocalls on Thursday.

Meanwhile, discussions of plagiarism and its detection have surged since Harvard’s now former president Claudine Gay was accused of plagiarizing portions of two previously published articles. Gay resigned in the wake of that and after a congressional hearing on antisemitism in higher education.

With faculty spending more than a year fretting about the potential abuse of AI tools like ChatGPT, technology companies such as Turnitin have touted the benefits of AI detectors. The tools, typically integrated into other grammar and writing software, scan text like a spell-checker or antiplagiarism program.

Turnitin says its AI-detection tool, in an attempt to avoid false positives, can miss roughly 15 percent of AI-generated text in a document.

“We’re comfortable with that since we do not want to highlight human-written text as AI text,” the company’s website says , pointing toward its 1 percent false-positive rate.

The detection tools have raised their own questions, and for many institutions there are no clear-cut answers.

“The idea of being all for it or entirely against it, I don’t know if it breaks down like that,” said Holly Hassel, director of the composition program at Michigan Technological University. “You imagine it as a tool that could be beneficial while recognizing it’s flawed and may penalize some students.”

The Effectiveness of AI Detectors

In June last year, an international team of academics found a dozen AI-detection tools were “ neither accurate nor reliable .”

That same month, a team of University of Maryland students found the tools would flag work not produced by AI or could be entirely circumvented by paraphrasing AI-generated text. Their research found “these detectors are not reliable in practical scenarios.”

“There are a lot of companies raising a lot of funding and claiming they have detectors to be reliably used, but the issue is none of them explain what the evaluation is and how it’s done—it’s just snapshots,” said Soheil Feizi, the director of the university’s Reliable AI Lab who oversaw the Maryland team.

In November, two professors from Australia’s University of Adelaide conducted AI-detection experiments for Times Higher Education ( Inside Higher Ed ’s parent company).

Some tools, including Copyleaks, fared better than others, but the professors summed up their findings with a singular warning: “The real takeaway is that we should assume students will be able to break any AI-detection tools, regardless of their sophistication.”

The investigations themselves raised concerns about feeding students’ work to the generative AI tools, where it’s “not clear what’s done with it,” Isaacs said.

Isaacs and Feizi noted other problems, including that there is no evidence trail when the tools flag suspected AI writing.

“With the AI detection, it’s just a score and there’s nothing to click,” Isaacs said. “You can’t replicate or analyze the methodology the detection system used, so it’s a black box.”

Turnitin's AI detector

Turnitin 

Annie Chechitelli, chief product officer at Turnitin, emphasized the importance of teacher-student relationships, rather than relying solely on technology tools.

“Detection is only one small piece of the puzzle in how educators can address with AI writing in the classroom,” Chechitelli said in a statement to Inside Higher Ed . “The largest piece of that puzzle is the student-to-teacher relationship. Our guidance is, and has always been, that there is no substitute for knowing a student, knowing their writing style and background.”

Despite their skepticism of the detection tools, Feizi and other researchers support the use of AI technology over all.

“A more comprehensive solution is to embrace the AI models in education,” Feizi said. “It’s a little bit of a hard job, but it’s the right way to think of it. The wrong way is to police it and, worse than that, is to rely on unreliable detectors in order to enforce that.”

Beginnings of an Approach on AI Detection

The Modern Language Association and the Conference on College Composition and Communication have been careful in giving guidance about AI detectors. The two groups formed a joint task force on writing and AI in November 2022, publishing their first working paper in July.

“We don’t take a formal stance, but we have a principle that tools for accountability should be used with caution and discernment or not at all,” said Hassel, co-chair of the task force and professor at Michigan Technological University. She added that among the task force members, there’s a range of approaches to the tools, with some banning them entirely.

The group’s second working paper, delving further into AI detection and the usage of tools, is slated for completion this spring.

Elizabeth Steere, a lecturer in English at the University of North Georgia, has written about the efficacy of AI detectors. She and other UNG faculty members use the AI detector iThenticate from Turnitin. Students’ work is automatically checked when they turn in assignments to their Dropbox.

Several journals also use the iThenticate tool, although the value of the costly software has been debated . Turnitin, the company behind iThenticate, offers customized pricing based on organizations’ size and needs. Otherwise, it’s generally $100 for each manuscript of fewer than 25,000 words.

Steere said the AI detector is just one tool in preventing plagiarism.

“It is a fraught issue, and each institution really does need to weigh the pros and cons and come to their own decisions, because it’s complex—it’s thorny,” she said.

The issue is further complicated by the inclusion of AI in common writing tools, like Grammarly, Google Docs and various spell-checkers.

“A lot of times it was [students saying], ‘No, I didn’t use AI,’ then it comes out they were using an overall rephrasing tool, not thinking it’s an AI tool,” Steere said. “The boundaries are much blurrier now; I really feel for the students, because we didn’t have that when we were in school.”

Steere uses those instances as teachable moments to explain the various degrees of plagiarism.

“If every student said, ‘I didn’t use AI,’ and I say, ‘Yes, you did,’ it’s not helping anyone,” she said. “But you can speak with them directly and figure out their writing process—have they used tools or augmenting, and do they consider that to be AI?”

State Grants Spread Thin

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Minnesota State Bar Takes Big Step Toward Launching Gen AI Regulatory Sandbox

Those leading the effort, which could also propose changes to the state’s unauthorized practice of law regulation, are optimistic Minnesota can become the second U.S. state to launch a regulatory sandbox.

August 19, 2024 at 01:10 PM

9 minute read

Artificial Intelligence

Rhys Dipshan

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The Minnesota State Bar Association (MBSA) has greenlighted a new committee that will lay the groundwork for a novel generative AI regulatory sandbox program tasked with improving access to justice in the state.

If fully implemented, the sandbox would leverage generative AI—specifically the large language models (LLMs) powering the technology—to help self-represented litigants interacting with the judicial system at certain points, from housing to immigration.

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Inside Safe City, Moscow’s AI Surveillance Dystopia

Sergey Vyborov was on his way to the Moscow Metro’s Aeroport station last September when police officers stopped him. The 49-year-old knew that taking the metro could spell trouble. During a protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, police had fingerprinted and photographed him. He’d already been detained four times in 2022. But he was rushing to his daughter’s birthday, so he took a chance.

Vyborov wasn’t arrested that day, but the police informed him that he was under surveillance through Sfera, one of Moscow’s face recognition systems, for participating in unsanctioned rallies. Considered one of the most efficient surveillance systems, Sfera led to the detention of  141 people last year. “Facial recognition, and video cameras in general in a totalitarian state, are an absolute evil,” Vyborov says. 

Vyborov finds himself at the bottom of a slippery slope that privacy advocates have long warned about . Under the guise of smart city technology, authoritarian and democratic governments have rolled out huge networks of security cameras and used artificial intelligence to try to ensure there is no place to hide. Cities have touted the ability of such systems to tackle crime, manage crowds, and better respond to emergencies. Privacy campaigners say such systems could be used as tools of oppression. In Moscow, Vyborov and countless others now face that oppression on a daily basis.

The Russian capital is now the  seventh -most-surveilled city in the world. Across Russia, there are an  estimated 21 million surveillance cameras, and the country ranks among the top in the world in terms of the number of connected surveillance cameras. The system created by Moscow’s government, dubbed Safe City, was touted by city officials as a way to streamline its public safety systems. In recent years, however, its  217,000 surveillance cameras, designed to catch criminals and terrorists, have been turned against protestors, political rivals, and journalists. 

“Facial recognition was supposed to be the ‘cherry on top,’ the reason why all of this was built,” says a former employee of NTechLab, one of the principal companies building Safe City’s face recognition system.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Safe City’s data collection practices have become increasingly opaque. The project is now seen as a tool of rising digital repression as Russia wages war against Ukraine and dissenting voices within its own borders. It is an example of the danger smart city technologies pose. And for the engineers and programmers who built such systems, its transformation into a tool of oppression has led to a moment of reckoning. 

Founded in 2015, NTechLab  caught the attention of the global press with the February 2016 launch of FindFace, an app that allowed anyone to identify faces by matching them with images gathered from social network  VKontakte , Russia’s Facebook equivalent. Met with warnings of the  “end to public anonymity,” the app was reportedly downloaded by 500,000 people within two months of its launch. But for NTechLab, it was primarily a proof of concept for its nascent face recognition algorithm.

NTechLab still felt like a startup when one former employee, who asked not to be named for privacy reasons, joined the company. And he was drawn in by the complexity of the work.

“From [an] engineering point of view, it’s very interesting to work with: It’s very difficult,” he says. 

After the release of FindFace, NTechLab began selling its face recognition tech to small businesses, such as shopping malls that could use it to catch shoplifters or see how many people return to certain stores. But NTechLab was also working with the Moscow Department of IT Technology (DIT), the government department tasked with building Moscow’s digital infrastructure. In 2018, when Russia hosted the FIFA World Cup, NTechLab’s face recognition tech was connected to more than 450 security cameras around Moscow, and its tech  reportedly helped police detain 180 people whom the state deemed “wanted criminals.”

At its inception, Moscow’s face recognition system was fed official watchlists, like the database of wanted people. The system uses these lists to notify the police once a person on the list is detected, but law enforcement can also upload an image and search for where a person has appeared. Over the years, security and law enforcement agencies have compiled a database of the leaders of the political opposition and prominent activists, according to Sarkis Darbinyan, cofounder of digital rights group Roskomsvoboda, which has been campaigning for a suspension of the technology. It remains unclear who is in charge of adding activists and protesters to watchlists.

In March 2019, following the success of the World Cup trial—some of Russia’s “most wanted” people were arrested while trying to attend matches—the Moscow Department of Transportation, which operates the city’s metro, launched its own surveillance system, Sfera. By October 2019, 3,000 of the city’s 160,000 cameras were enabled with face recognition tech, according to interior minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev.

NTechLab was one of many companies building the slew of systems that would later be branded Safe City. International companies, from US tech firms such as Nvidia, Intel, and Broadcom to South Korea’s Samsung and Chinese camera maker Hikvision, worked alongside local firms such as  HeadPoint ,  Netris , and  Rostelecom  that have developed various components of the surveillance systems. According to procurement documents cited by the UK’s BBC, three companies besides NTechLab created face recognition tech for Moscow’s growing surveillance apparatus, including Tevian, and Kipod, and VisionLabs. Moscow's Transportation Department said in social media posts that Sfera was built using VisionLabs technology, although the company downplays its involvement.

NtechLab says it operates in compliance with local laws and does not have access to customer data or camera video streams. Nvidia and Intel say they left Russia in 2022, with Nvidia adding that it does not create software or algorithms for surveillance. Broadcom and Samsung also say they stopped doing business in Russia following the invasion. VisionLabs says it only provides the Moscow Metro with its face recognition payment system. Other companies did not respond to requests for comment. The DIT and the Moscow Department of Transportation did not respond to requests for comment.

At the end of 2018, as Russia cracked down harder on political dissent online and in the streets, the DIT started to change, says a former employee who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons. The department used to just be the “technical guys” providing assistance to security services, with the Moscow government recruiting highly paid IT specialists to make the most efficient systems possible, according to Andrey Soldatov, an investigative journalist and Russian security services expert. But according to the former employee, the DIT was beginning to reflect the Kremlin’s authoritarian bent.

Then came Covid. 

Safe City launched in 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Russia, like some other countries, seemingly used the pandemic as grounds to expand its surveillance systems to catch people breaking self-isolation rules. By mid-March 2020, Safe City’s face recognition system had  caught 200 people breaking lockdown restrictions. At the same time, Moscow  introduced a regulatory sandbox for the development of AI applications with the participation of large IT companies, exempting authorities from the country’s already lax data protection requirements. “With Covid, [the DIT] essentially became a part of the repressive apparatus,” says Soldatov.

In addition to its network of more than 200,000 cameras, Safe City also incorporates data from  169  information systems, managing data on citizens, public services, transportation, and nearly everything else that makes up Moscow’s infrastructure. This includes anonymized cell phone geolocation data collection, vehicle license plate recognition, data from ride-hailing services, and voice recognition devices. As Safe City was still rolling out in 2020, the Russian government  announced  plans to spend $1.3 billion deploying similar Safe City systems across Russia. From the outside, the potential for the system to be abused seemed obvious. But for those involved in its development, it looked like many other smart city projects. “No one expected that the country would turn into hell in two years,” says one former NTechLab employee, who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons.

Attempts to break open Moscow’s digital black box have been stonewalled. Alena Popova, whose image was captured during a protest against  politician Leonid Eduardovich Slutsky in April 2018, filed the first lawsuit against Moscow’s DIT for allegedly violating her privacy, seeking a ban on face recognition tech. The case was  thrown out , but Popova has continued to file lawsuits, including one at the European Court of Human Rights—which Russia is  no longer a part of. 

While Moscow operates one of the world’s most pervasive surveillance systems, Russian law does not safeguard individual privacy. With seemingly no hope of recourse, some activists have been forced to leave Russia altogether. Popova is now on the list of foreign agents and is living in an undisclosed overseas location. “I will not apply to any political asylum in any country because I would like to go back to my own country and fight back,” she says.

A key concern is that Moscow’s surveillance system was designed to conceal its data collection from Moscow’s 12 million residents, says Sergey Ross, founder of the Collective Action Center think tank and a former Moscow politician. Although the system is run by the Moscow government, elected members of the Moscow City Duma  say  they are excluded from regulating face recognition systems and have little insight into how it is being used. “It’s a complete black box,” says Ross.

“It was clear that sooner or later the technology would be used to catch activists and dissenters,” says Roskomsvoboda’s Darbinyan. 

Russia made  almost 20,500 political arrests in 2022 , according to data from human rights media organization OVD-Info, which characterizes the number as “unprecedented.” The arrests have sparked fears that Safe City will be expanded to catch draft dodgers—although former NTechLab employees say that doing so would be technically difficult to pull it off because of too many false positives. Still, Moscow police appear to be using face recognition to aid Russia’s war efforts in other ways.

In September 2022, just after Putin announced additional mobilization for the war against Ukraine, Viktor Kapitonov, a 27-year-old activist who’d protested regularly since 2013, was stopped by two police officers after being flagged by face recognition surveillance while he approached the turnstiles in Moscow’s marble-covered Avtozavdodskaya metro station. The officers took him to the military recruitment office, where around 15 people were waiting to enlist in Putin’s newly announced draft. 

“They let me in without waiting in line as if I were some sort of VIP person,” he says. The recruiters wanted to force Kapitonov to enlist, but he ended up escaping the draft. “I explained that I am not fit, I have a disability.”

From 2017 to 2020, NTechLab became one of Russia’s  fastest-growing companies. Other face recognition firms have cashed in as well: The revenue of Russian face recognition developers  grew between 30 and 35 percent in 2022, thanks in part to deals struck in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, India, and South America. Russia’s national AI strategy has supported such firms with grants, tax exemptions, and subsidies, which have benefited both startups and state corporations, including tech and finance giant Sber , telecom provider  Rostelecom , and defense firm Rostec, which previously owned a minority stake in NTechLab. While NTechLab continues to work globally, reporting a revenue increase of 35 percent in 2022, it has also faced a backlash against its work with the Russian state.

In June of last year, a “name-and-shame” list of NTechLab employees was  published [in Russian] with information collected from social media. The project went viral, and some employees reported being harassed online. Artem Zinnatullin, a software engineer now based in the US, says he published the list after NTechLab  sold its new  silhouette recognition technology to the Moscow government in June 2022. To him, it signaled support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. In the post, he called NTechLab “the blacksmith of the Digital Gulag.” Zinnatullin, who says he knew people arrested with the help of face recognition technology, believes publishing the list of NTechLab employees was only fair. “You recognize people on the street, it’s only fair if we use public data to recognize who you are,” he says.

Unlike many face recognition companies that keep a low profile, NTechLab’s splash with FindFace has turned it into a recognized brand. Employees say this high profile has made them into scapegoats. 

As arrests of activists and politicians mounted, the ethics of NTechLab’s technology became a recurring topic at company meetings. NTechLab staff have resisted the use of the company’s face recognition in rallies and refused to sell the technology to the military, according to people familiar with these discussions. Still, the NTechLab leadership concluded that the technology was ultimately positive—even if the occasional dissenting voice was arrested because of it. 

“We all saw these positive examples, we saw how it really catches criminals,” says one former NTechLab employee. “Most people in NTechLab would say they were doing something very good, technologies that can help and save people’s lives. It really did.”

As Russia furthered its march toward authoritarianism in 2021, NTechLab leadership began talking about moving the company abroad, according to people familiar with internal company discussions. But with lucrative government contracts abounding—NTechLab  received a $13 million investment from the Russian Direct Investment Fund, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, in September 2020—its investors resisted the idea. The company was also changing. Its founders, Alexander Kabakov and Artem Kukharenko, stepped down from NTechLab—and both left Russia in December 2021 and February 2022, respectively, declaring   their  anti-war stance on social media. 

Other employees left amid an exodus of IT talent from Russia. The war changed how they viewed their work. “Looking back, we realize that we shouldn’t have done it,” says an NTechLab employee. “But even in 2017 and 2018, it was a completely different country. At least, that’s how it seemed to those who weren’t very immersed in politics.”

Russia’s Safe City projects show no sign of slowing. As more surveillance systems are deployed across the country, Moscow’s DIT is planning to centralize video streams collected across all regions into its own system. And new projects to digitize public services may make it even easier for the government to eventually create large databases where everyone can be found, according to Popova. “It is really scary,” she says. “If they digitalize all the databases and combine them to make this joint database, they can find everybody.” In July, Putin  signed a federal law that funnels personal biometric data collected in the country into a single system—an effort to obtain an “almost unlimited monopoly” on the collection and storage of biometrics, says Roskomsvoboda’s Darbinyan. 

In a further expansion of the Safe City project, Rostec is also  reportedly  developing software that will help authorities predict riots and prevent their escalation by analyzing media reports, data from social networks, video cameras, and other sources. Rostec did not respond to a request for comment on its development of these systems.

Similar systems have been developed in some Chinese cities, and Russia is now playing catch-up. “The Russian government would probably like to move toward China, but they do not yet have the necessary technology,” says Kiril Koroteev, head of international practice at the Russia-based Agora International Human Rights Group.

For now, many activists in Russia are left to do whatever they can to skirt the country’s growing surveillance apparatus, including avoiding the Moscow Metro. Kapitonov hopes that a balaclava will keep him safe, while Vyborov aims to ride the metro early in the morning, when there are fewer police around to detain him. 

“I think that it was inevitable that such a system would be made sooner or later,” says one former NTechLab employee. Face recognition is like a knife, he says: It can be used to cut food, but it can also be used to cut innocent people. He now regrets that NTechLab played a key role in building Moscow’s Safe City project. He has left Russia and doesn’t think he will work on face recognition again. “I do not want to mess with it anymore,” he says.

Update 9:25 am ET, February 6, 2023: Clarified the role of VisionLabs in the Sfera system and that NTechLab's founders have since left the company.

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