University of Manchester - AI Policy & UnTXT Guidance
What Manchester's AI Policy Actually Says
Manchester says something about our entire category of product that we are going to quote in full rather than bury:
"Tools to detect AI-generated content are unreliable and biased and cannot be relied on to identify academic malpractice in summative assessment. Output from such tools cannot currently be used as evidence of malpractice."
We think Manchester is right, and we would rather say so on our own page than have you find it somewhere else.
Detectors are wrong about people. They are wrong more often about writers whose English is careful, formal, or learned as a second language, which is a bias with a direction and a cost, and it lands on the students least able to argue back. A university that refuses to convict anybody on a detector score is protecting exactly the people who most need protecting. If a marker ever produces a detection score as proof you cheated, Manchester's own guidance is on your side, not theirs.
So what is UnTXT for at Manchester?
Not evidence. Not a defence exhibit, and not something to wave at a panel — the policy above closes that door and closes it correctly. It is a mirror you hold up to your own draft before you submit, in private, where the only person reading the result is you. If a passage comes back grey, the useful question is not am I in trouble but does this sound like me, or does it sound like the tired institutional register I slide into at 2am. Usually it is the second, and the fix is your own voice.
On the rest of Manchester's guidance, which is unusually clear about tools:
"Using an AI tool to correct grammar or spelling is acceptable, but where a student uses an AI tool for proofreading work submitted for assessment, they should ensure that use of the tool does not result in substantive changes to the content or meaning of their work or go beyond what is allowed for the assessment."
UnTXT stays on the safe side of the first half of that by a wide margin, because it makes no changes at all. It cannot alter your meaning; it has no mechanism to. It marks passages and stops. The last clause is the one to check for yourself: what is allowed for your assessment is in the brief, and the brief wins.
And the declaration rule: "Students should declare any use of generative AI in preparing work for assessment, and explain its role."
What we would do. Declare it, in one line — "I used UnTXT, an AI pattern checker, to check my own draft. It made no changes to the text." That second sentence is the one that matters at Manchester, because "explain its role" is what the policy asks for and it changed nothing is a complete answer.
Source: University AI Guidelines — The University of Manchester, checked 11 October 2026. Your School may add to this. Where Manchester's pages and this one disagree, theirs is the one that counts.
Where the rule that binds you lives
The university-wide page is rarely the whole answer. Check, in this order: your assessment brief, then your module or course handbook, and if neither says, ask whoever set the work. If it matters, get the answer in writing.
Using UnTXT on Manchester work
- Finish the draft first. Run it on something complete. A half-written argument reads as disjointed to any checker, ours included.
- Paste it in and press Analyse. Two AI models read it separately and argue over each passage, and a third settles what they cannot agree on.
- Read the reasons on the grey passages. Grey means the passage follows the patterns machine writing leans on. Formal academic prose earns that honestly, so read the reason before you change anything.
- Leave the gold alone. Those passages already sound like you.
- Change what you decide to change, in your own words. Nothing on the page will write it for you.
- Say you used it, if your course asks which tools you used, and arguably even if it does not.
What the marks do and do not mean
A mark is not a verdict, and it is not evidence of how you wrote something. Grey says a passage reads a certain way. It cannot say who wrote it, and nobody at Manchester should be told otherwise on the strength of it, by you or by anybody else.
There is no percentage, because a number invites people to treat a reading as a ruling.
Questions
What does it cost?
The first 1,000 words are free, with no card. That covers an extract more often than a whole essay. Checking whole pieces means a monthly plan, from £8.40 including tax.
Can I check a dissertation in sections?
Yes. Every check is saved to your Documents under its own title, so you can go a chapter at a time.
My work has been questioned. What now?
Bring your process: drafts, notes, the sources that surprised you. That settles the question better than any tool's output does. There is a longer piece at If you have been accused.