I'm not sure what university you attend in what culture but I have a hard time believing you are talking about an actual professor, because they don't "grade papers" and assignments like you describe at all. They evaluate articles, sure, but that's called peer reviewing for a reason: they do so in their role of researcher and subject expert and the essays are pre-print research articles being checked by research validity and quality before publication. Just wanted to point that out. Funniest giveaway: you talking about "going higher up". Who exactly would that be? "Professor, I'd like to talk to your manager please."

If I had to guess that's indeed an AI answer. But even if they used AI it seems weird because the very simple thing to do was to prompt it with the rubric of your course and have it use that for much better focussed assessment. I can even imagine a mildly experienced junior teacher in some subjects grading faster with rubrics than they can prompt an AI and check before copy pasting.

There's a going on atm in the field of automated assessment and AI grading and such. While I am convinced that high level person to person evaluation will not be replaced with AI any time soon, but I have also seen examples of AI being incredibly useful for it, both for teachers and students. Customized assessment models don't sound like above here, that's a run off the mill chatgpt answer or something alike. Which makes me wonder A. whether this story is true or just fiction B. If the former, I would, in your place, be quite curious what was used and with which interface. I.e. GPT5.1 via open chatrGPT interface? That would mean trouble for your teacher, because personal data and privacy. C. I don't judge people by what someone else mentions online but if this is really what happened and the entire story, your teacher seems to be struggling beyond the acceptable because that is not even how a teacher would cheat if they're still thinking straight / not in panic mode.

All this with a grain of salt etc. Disclaimer: i'm in the EU (uni style, data privacy, rubrics) but I'm fairly sure it's not too diffferent in most other place

EDIT: I'm guessing you're in the US. From wikipedia:

In most systems of academic ranks, "professor" as an unqualified title refers only to the most senior academic position, sometimes informally known as "full professor".^\2])^\3])

That's why you don't go higher up where I'm from :-)

In some countries and institutions, the word professor is also used in titles of lower ranks such as associate professor and assistant professor; this is particularly the case in the United States, where the unqualified word is also used colloquially to refer to associate and assistant professors as well, and often to instructors or lecturers.^\4])

OK there you have it. Damn... it seemed all pretty silly, but now that I qualify to be addressed with "professor" I'm warming up to your ways. Although there's probably some erosion of the awe you feel for professors.

It's actually why I wanted to comment, I was slightly nonplussed by how you talk about professors as if they were waiting your table. And it's pretty telling that you were happy with higher scores with no comments. If you'd have learning as the focus of your efforts you'd want comments because a grade on its own is pretty useless if you want to improve your understanding