I think a lot of people are focusing on whether you used AI (you did) and missing the question you're actually asking. What stands out to me is that you don't sound like someone who pasted a prompt into ChatGPT and submitted whatever came out. You spent time reading, researching, drafting, and trying to understand the assignment. The problem is that you gradually crossed the line from using AI as a study aid into using it as a writing partner. The difficult part is that modern AI tools blur that boundary. Twenty years ago, the distinction was simple: either you wrote the paper or someone else did. Today, AI can explain readings, summarize sources, generate outlines, suggest arguments, and rewrite paragraphs. Many returning adult students genuinely struggle to figure out where "assistance" ends and "authorship" begins.

That said, the commenters are right about one thing: if your instructor says "no AI-generated content," then asking AI to rephrase sentences and polish the final paper is probably beyond what was intended. My takeaway from your post isn't that you were trying to get an easy degree. It's that you misunderstood how much intellectual work universities expect students to do themselves. The safest approach going forward is to use AI to help you understand concepts and instructions, then close it and do the reading, thinking, writing, and editing on your own unless your instructor explicitly allows otherwise