ChatGPT and other AI generative platforms have greatly complicated the concept of plagiarism in higher education. Consider the following dilemma:
Debby R.E. Cotton and Peter A. Cotton, authors of Chatting & Cheating: Ensuring Academic Integrity in the Era of ChatGPT, demonstrated this predicament by using ChatGPT to write a significant portion of their article. They considered including it as a co-author, but as they wrote, "[ChatGPT] was unable to provide agreement on submission to this journal and it has not reviewed and agreed the article before submission. Perhaps more crucially, it cannot take responsibility and be accountable for the contents of the article."
The SUNY Potsdam Academic Code of Honor now stresses that improper use of AI can be considered cheating, and all syllabi are required to include a statement regarding acceptable AI usage in each course. Thus, College Libraries strongly suggest each instructor establishes clear guidelines regarding what role, if any, ChatGPT has within their classroom.
And even if instructors allow students to use ChatGPT to help them write their assignments, emerging industry standards advise that students must cite AI text platforms if they use them in order to indicate the ideas and work they are submitting are not their own.
Currently, ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms tend to write in a bland, generic style and often produce text that isn't quite human, while human writing tends to be more contextually aware. This may change as AI technology develops, but at present, checking for this bland text that does not resemble the student's own personal writing style is one means of determining if an assignment was written by a student or ChatGPT.
Additionally:
But recognize that Open AI and its competitors are constantly working to improve their platforms, so future versions may eliminate many of these telltale signs of AI writing.
There are many AI online AI "detectors" online, but they struggle to accurately parse the difference between human writing and AI writing, and have become infamous for frequent false positives. Detectors particularly struggle with content written by ESL students, frequently identifying their own written work as being the product of AIs. At present, College Libraries does not recommend using AI detectors as the sole means of determining whether a student's work is their own or the product of generative AI.
Ditch That Textbook suggests viewing plagiarism and ChatGPT as a sliding scale:
