My Hot Take on AI and Plagiarism
Recently, I was invited to weigh in on a LinkedIn post about AI. The question was whether using AI to create content counts as plagiarism if you don’t credit the AI. The post included an AI-generated response to this question, which stated:
“Using artificial intelligence to write essays and articles is considered plagiarism. Plagiarism is defined as representing someone else’s work as your own without giving proper credit.”
The poster concluded that using AI without crediting it is indeed plagiarism. I disagree, and I’ll explain why later. But first, let’s clear up the confusion between copyright infringement and plagiarism, as they often get mixed up.
What is Copyright Infringement?
Copyright infringement happens when someone uses a copyrighted work without permission. U.S. copyright law gives the creator of an original work exclusive rights to use the work, including the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, perform, display and create derivatives of the work.
If someone exercises any of these rights without permission, it’s copyright infringement, which, of course, can lead to legal consequences.
What is Plagiarism?
Plagiarism is the act of using someone else’s work or ideas without giving proper credit and presenting them as your own. For the most part, it’s an ethical violation rather than a legal one, but can still have serious consequences. We all learned about plagiarism in school when we were told to cite our sources in reports. In professional settings, plagiarism can damage your reputation and career. Examples include:
Copying and pasting text without citation
Paraphrasing someone else’s ideas without credit
Submitting someone else’s work as your own
Failing to acknowledge collaborators or co-authors
Key Differences and Overlaps
There can be overlaps. For instance, if you take someone’s written work, claim it as your own, and distribute it, you could be guilty of both copyright infringement and plagiarism. However, you can also have one without the other.
For example:
Copyright Infringement without Plagiarism: Using someone else’s work with full credit but without permission.
Plagiarism without Copyright Infringement: Submitting a public domain work as your own work.
Is it Plagiarism to Use AI without Credit?
Here’s my hot take: Using AI without crediting AI is not plagiarism.
Remember, plagiarism without copyright infringement is an ethical, not a legal, issue. In my opinion, plagiarism has two ethical purposes:
Ensure the creator of an idea gets credit for their idea.
AI doesn’t have ideas or creative intent.
It generates content based on algorithms and existing data fed into its training data set. Therefore, there’s no ethical obligation to credit AI the same way we have an ethical obligation to credit human creators.
AI doesn’t have ideas or creative intent. It generates content based on algorithms and existing data. Therefore, there’s no ethical obligation to credit AI the same way we have an ethical obligation to human creators.
Furthermore, in my experience, the AI “plagiarist” gets no reputational benefit from claiming AI-generated content as his own. In fact, it may have the opposite effect.
So long as you are using best practices when using AI, you can leave the ethical questions to the philosophers.
Not at all a hot take—IP is Fuel!