CheatGPT Crisis: SA Universities in an AI Arms Race. Why handwritten essays are back and how ChatGPT is rewriting degrees... literally. A quiet crisis is playing out in South Africa’s lecture halls. Students across the country are using AI, especially tools like ChatGPT, to cheat their way through assignments. Lecturers are calling it “the new plagiarism,” but unlike copy-paste cheating of old, this one can’t be caught by Turnitin.