For decades, plagiarism has been the biggest threat to validity and authenticity in academic publishing. In a time before the internet and the creation of an AI Detector, it was much more difficult to verify if something was, in fact, a wholly original work or not. There was no search engine bar to simply type part of a sentence into to see if there were other links; instead, there were entirely libraries full of books and texts on respective subjects.
To even find the source text that had been plagiarised was difficult enough as it was, but to then effectively communicate post-publishing and circulation that a given text was invalidated via plagiarism was even more difficult. Without the internet, which could afford a worldwide means of public communication that is easily accessible to everyone, communication on this large stage would have been impossible.
So, in many ways, the internet was a blessing for academic writing and publishing. Not only did it allow for easier and simpler means of checking works for plagiarism and communicating about the evolving legacy of a given published work, but it also aided writers in fact-checking and finding sources for their work.
The internet was a boundless information source that enabled writers to cite their influences and informative sources clearly and efficiently. While it also made plagiarism easier than ever, reducing it to a simple copy-and-paste, it simultaneously afforded readers and publications an equally advanced system of checking for plagiarism.
Such was the relationship between academic publishing and the internet for two decades leading up to the 2020s. But with the introduction of AI generators, an entirely new can of worms has been opened, making the need for transparency and honesty in academic publishing more vital and pressing.
Fortunately, tools such as AI detectors can scan a given work for tendencies commonly associated with AI-penned writing and trace them back to their root. However, the complications related to AI generators and their ability to write plagiarism-filled work are immense and seemingly evolving.
Plagiarism in The Internet Age
Among the most infamous cases of plagiarism in writing is Jayson Blair’s. Blair was a professional writer and journalist who began working at The New York Times in 1999. Many aspiring writers would kill for this position at a time when newspapers such as The New York Times still held a great deal of importance in American culture.
Blair became a widely renowned and highly acclaimed writer. It’s critical to note that Blair’s tenure at The New York Times overlaps directly with the widespread commodification and normalisation of home computers.
Throughout Blair’s time at the Times, more and more people were gaining access to the World Wide Web and, for the first time, could easily read publications from across the country. This eventually led to Blair’s firing from The New York Times in 2003, as it was proven that Blair had fabricated, fictionalised, or plagiarised numerous articles from other sources, such as the San Antonio Express-News.
Blair’s case is especially notable because it demonstrates the internet’s burgeoning role in aiding his plagiarism, eventually leading to his firing in the early 2000s. Similarly, the 2020s have experienced a similar learning curve in relation to the advent and implementation of AI-generated writing.
In April, a Wyoming reporter was caught using AI generators to write entire news publications whole-cloth and ultimately forced to resign.
Just a few months ago, movie studio Lionsgate and its marketing team were accused and proven to have used AI to write fake review pull quotes to be utilised in a trailer for the new film Megalopolis, which led to the firing of the lead marketing creative.
The Harm of AI-Generated Writing in Official Publications
Instances such as these may seem harmless on the surface as if they are little more than a writer neglecting their work and simply allowing AI to write it quickly for them. But it’s a much graver and more serious situation than that.
In the case of the Wyoming reporter, the stories written by AI and published included entirely incorrect information that readers could have taken dangerously out of context. In the case of the Megalopolis trailer, many of the pull quotes generated by AI were entirely fabricated yet were attributed to real-life writers, many of whom are deceased.
In these ways, AI-generated writing pedals widespread misinformation and detracts from the validity of authentic, human intelligence-fueled writing.
Detecting AI
This is why identifying AI-aided writing is essential, especially in academic publishing. Scholars and readers look to academic texts for the most up-to-date, important information. Compromising these texts with the inconsistencies, malware, and misinformation commonly found in AI-generated texts would defeat the entire purpose of their existence.
Fortunately, AI Detector has made great strides in identifying such measures. It offers the most accurate AI content detection, identifying AI-generated content from ChatGPT, GPT-4.0, Gemini Pro, Claude 3.5, Llama 3.1, and other leading AI writing or paraphrasing tools.
AI Detector has highly accurate detection, identifying AI-generated content with unmatched precision. Its detector ensures reliable results across a wide range of AI writing tools and can deliver real-time analysis with immediate results. Users can make efficient and informed decisions by working so rapidly to verify whether AI-generated content.
In addition, it has a user-friendly interface and an intuitive platform that makes it easy for anyone to detect AI-generated content, with clear results and a simple workflow. Alongside its AI-checking capabilities, it also features plagiarism check integration and detailed reporting that offers transparency with scores and recommendations.
Living With AI Writing
Ultimately, what is AI-generated writing if not just plagiarism evolved for a new generation? AI is less an actual form of intelligence imbued into artificial programs and more a digital blender, which users can feed information, structures, or templates and then prompt to deliver results.
In this way, writing using an AI generator is equivalent to plagiarism, failing to do your research or work and instead relying upon the hard-earned work of others to fill the gaps for you. This is unacceptable in most places, but especially in academic writing.
Fortunately, just as technology provided a remedy for plagiarism, ever-advancing technology has provided something of a remedy for AI-generated writing, allowing for greater transparency in academic writing.
