project
The Originality Bureau
Forensic services for suspicious coursework
The Originality Bureau is a fictional detective agency for universities uncertain about the authorship of student work.
Its visual language comes from private investigation rather than educational technology: case files, evidence bags, confidential reports and the promise of discreet inquiry. Clients submit an essay. The Bureau reconstructs a possible history of its production from drafts, prompts, stylistic changes and model traces.
The joke conceals a serious methodological question. Authorship is becoming less like a binary property and more like a history of decisions. Detection systems promise a simple verdict precisely when the underlying activity is becoming harder to describe.
Centre for Speculative AI · Speculative material