“I need a 10 page essay written on the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. Must have 7 resources.”: That’s an example of a request that can be found on online tutoring services like Chegg, as shared by a senior data scientist at the company, Sanghamitra Deb. And you don’t need to be an expert in academic honor codes to know that it constitutes as cheating.

Yet this is the kind of “help” that Chegg’s tutoring service can sometimes be used for. And it’s what the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company wants to thwart...

“I need a 10 page essay written on the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. Must have 7 resources.”: That’s an example of a request that can be found on online tutoring services like Chegg, as shared by a senior data scientist at the company, Sanghamitra Deb. And you don’t need to be an expert in academic honor codes to know that it constitutes as cheating.

Yet this is the kind of “help” that Chegg’s tutoring service can sometimes be used for. And it’s what the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company wants to thwart...