With AI becoming more prominent in our world, students and adults are faced with the question of whether claiming AI’s work as their own is plagiarism. Many people have their own opinions on this matter, including technology itself.
Most people define plagiarism as claiming someone else’s work as your own. ChatGPT would have the same opinion. “Plagiarism is the act of using someone else’s work, ideas, or intellectual property without proper acknowledgment, presenting it as one’s own. This can include copying text, images, or concepts from a source, whether published or unpublished, and failing to credit the original creator” says ChatGPT.
ChatGPT gets information from other sources, such as articles, websites, books, etc. However, unless you ask it to tell you where it got those sources from, you can’t find out without asking. So even if AI isn’t considered plagiarism you could end up plagiarizing another credible source. You could not only be plagiarizing one source but all the other sources that were used to make that content.
The debate on whether AI is plagiarism is one that many have talked about, but not many have chosen to see AI’s standpoint. When asking ChatGPT how it feels about people using its work as their own it says, “Yes, if you were to take an essay that I provide and submit it as your work without acknowledging that it was generated by me, that would be considered plagiarism. This is because you would be presenting someone else’s work (in this case, my response) as your own, without giving proper credit or citation. In academic and professional settings, plagiarism involves using any source—whether it’s a published article, another person’s writing, or even AI-generated content—without acknowledgment. To avoid plagiarism, you would need to either cite the work or clearly state that it was produced with assistance from me, or any other tool you used.”
AI might be considered plagiarism to some, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used to help you with assignments or other tasks. “It has its pros and cons when helping figure things out. Sometimes I use AI to teach me things but I’m not gonna copy and paste an essay and call it my own, because claiming something as your own when it isn’t is plagiarism. When I’m confused about a math problem I can use it to tell me how to solve it; however, when I use it I tell it to explain the problem, not give me the answer,” says Dani Mason, a Junior at Truckee High.
There are many ways AI can be a useful tool. If you are confused about a topic and you need an example or explanation on what to do but your teacher is busy it can be great for that. AI has also been used as a tool to give you feedback on your work or give you a rough estimate of what your grade will be. If you are writing an essay and want to make sure you have everything you need you can give AI your rubric and it will give you a grade. This will not be the most accurate grade but it can give you nice tips that you might want to add to your writing.
AI has pros and cons, but the fact of whether it is plagiarism would be a yes from ChatGPT. With the basic definition of plagiarism, ChatGPT finds that even though it is not the traditional way of plagiarism it still is. However, there are still beneficial ways of using AI that can help you with any of your struggles. As long as you ask it what you want then you still receive the help you need.
