Innovation

GUEST AUTHOR

AUTHOR

Noelle Cubacub

EDITED BY

DATE

March 9, 2023

On originality and creativity: The future of plagiarism in an AI-dominated world

AUTHOR
Noelle Cubacub
GUEST AUTHOR
EDITED BY
DATE
March 9, 2023

Me: Please explain plagiarism and artificial intelligence like you, ChatGPT.

ChatGPT: Certainly!

Plagiarism is the act of using someone else's work or ideas as your own without proper attribution. It's essentially stealing someone else's intellectual property and passing it off as your own. 

Now, when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI), plagiarism can take on a different form. AI has the ability to generate text and content on its own, which can lead to the unintentional or intentional duplication of existing content. For example, if an AI language model is trained on a large dataset of text, it might produce content that is very similar to existing works without the creator realizing it.

This has become an issue in certain areas, such as academic writing, where students may use AI-generated content as their own work without realizing it is plagiarized. It's important to keep in mind that while AI can be incredibly useful in generating content, it's crucial to ensure that the content it produces is original and properly attributed to any sources it draws from.

Cheating and plagiarism issues circulated online with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) assisted tools and platforms this year. ChatGPT, for example, is an AI chatbot with advanced conversational capabilities that has created quite the buzz, especially in the academe.

Why does AI-assisted writing tools matter? How big a deal are these tools? Why can ChatGPT be both exciting and unsettling for the originality and creativity of people?

Artificial intelligence (AI) + Plagiarism = AIgiarism

AI coding systems for innovations. Photo by Danny Meneses

From creating an essay, solving math equations, finding answers to homework, writing music, and even playing Tic-Tac-Toe, ChatGPT can be used for a wide range of applications. Whether a beginner or an experienced user, this AI-based text generator tool has the capability to produce human-like responses to a wide range of questions and requests.

With its increasing popularity since early December 2022, ChatGPT has been accused of “AIgiarism” with the quality of its output. All generated free contents from this tool, if presented by a person as his or her own can be cases of plagiarism. By typing prompts and clicking the submit button, people are so vulnerable to directly committing an offense to academic integrity, or even worse, a lost sense of originality and creativity. 

Especially for students, teachers are alarmed with the clear and coherent responses written in natural English that seem to be out of context in some cases. As  generative large language tools like ChatGPT have no proper references with the contents they produce, people might face even more challenges in determining facts. It is now our responsibility to detect the consistency and logic in AI generated contents.

Why ChatGPT would not ever replace you

With the issues of plagiarism circulating online since the boom of ChatGPT, there is a need for a great emphasis on producing real human work of writing. AI-assisted tools can produce long forms of content that can be used for essays, reports, and articles, but it is still too limited to come up with argument-driven sentences, especially in cases where controversial topics will need pieces of logical yet emphatic evidence. 

If the students, for example, are just looking for tools to comply with the required word count, then ChatGPT can assist them in generating more ideas. However, by simply copying and pasting what this tool generates for them, they can never find and match the word that truly expresses what they want to express in the first place. ChatGPT can only be factual, but not fully communicative.

Read it from ChatGPT itself on how we can be aware of unintentional plagiarism and take steps to avoid it.

Me: How do you ensure that I am not committing plagiarism by using you, ChatGPT?

ChatGPT: As an AI language model, I am programmed to provide information and answer questions to the best of my ability based on the data and patterns in the text that I have been trained on. However, I do not have the ability to check or verify the originality of the content that you produce using my responses.

To avoid committing plagiarism, it is important to use the information provided by me as a starting point and to ensure that you properly cite and attribute any quotes or ideas that are not your own. This means that you should always use your own words and provide references to any sources that you use to support your ideas or arguments.

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