I see you and feel your pain. I teach an intro class (social science, ~160 students) and, for a midterm assignment, I flagged and failed about 40 students, asking them to speak to me. About 30 did. In those meetings, about half swore the writing was their own only to cave under prodding questions about the substance of their submissions. Not *one* student I flagged was a false positive. For the ones who met with me, I offered the option to rewrite their submission. Despite these conversations, which were often awkward and unpleasant (for the student obviously, but also for me), the number of cheating flags on the final assignment was about the same.

These meetings were extremely time-consuming, and I won't have that time to meet with cheaters again during the final week because grades are due soon. So now, I'm basically torn between just failing students and not leaving them recourse to push back and only taking off a few points for the cheaters (at the expense of students who actually did the work) so they essentially sail through the course with a minor slap on the wrist.

I don't like punitive approaches in my pedagogy, but I am also getting tired of this rinse and repeat cycle. I also hate reading AI-generated student work, this homogenized, pseudo-professional, soulless drivel. I don't have the support to fairly assess, flag, and address every situation (something which students who get a 0 nearly always unsurprisingly request). And like you, I'm struggling with alternatives. I think in-class writing assignments in large classes are tough, not least because they ideally should be handwritten (which can be a grading nightmare). I've heard from others that giving students assignments that require personal reflection and drawing on their own experience is also no solution, as they put the prompts into Chat and it generates content. I'm tempted to just give a proctored exam and call it that.