A recent book review in The New York Times generated controversy after readers noted it echoed certain passages from a previously published review of the same book in The Guardian. After investigating the incident, New York Times editors revealed the writer who wrote their review admitted to using AI and was unaware the chatbot was lifting ideas.
This is a mainstream example of a new type of plagiarism that has become increasingly common in the classroom. I’ve started calling AI plagiarism to distinguish it from both traditional plagiarism and overall AI cheating.
What’s striking is that it emerges both from clearly inappropriate AI use, such as students entering prompts directly into an AI chatbot, as well as from using AI as a brainstorming partner. As such, it has significant implications for how educators think and talk about appropriate AI use and prevent inappropriate use, at least when it comes to writing assignments.
Thinking about these policies recently has changed my approach as a writer and professor. Here’s how I’m overcoming AI plagiarism.
Warning Students About Dangers of AI As A Thought Partner
Since generative AI emerged as a mainstream force in education, the use of AI as a brainstorming tool has been recommended by many educators as an appropriate way for AI to assist the writing process.
Though I was initially open to this idea, I recently became skeptical of its ability to truly help as a writing partner. Students I work with have not improved their writing by asking AI for advice, and if anything, the writing I read, both in and out of class, has gotten much worse in recent years.
Beyond quality concerns, using AI as a “thought partner” places the user at a high risk of committing plagiarism. Also, if everyone is using it for the same assignments, there’s potential for a lot of overlap, intentional or not.
I’ve started to tell students that taking advice from AI is like buying art from an unscrupulous art dealer. You can never be certain that the painting you purchased doesn’t belong to someone else.
Focusing On The Plagiarism Part
One positive about AI plagiarism is that it’s frequently easier to catch using an old-fashioned plagiarism detector such as SafeAssign and Turnitin, which search the internet for papers submitted by other students and similar content in general.
In the writing courses I teach, when multiple students start using AI to write their papers, similar setups and phrasings start appearing. It’s easier to confront students about this than it is about potential AI use, which is more difficult to prove.
I’m all for giving students more chances and treating these infractions as teachable moments, but I’m taking a harder line than I once did because AI has made this problem more prevalent. The first time I catch students with a line or two of text that’s identical to another student, they might get off with a warning and a conversation with me. The next time, the penalty will be reported for an academic infraction.
Being Less Strict About Small Mistakes
Another way to discourage AI use in general is to let students know that I won’t be taking them to task for little grammatical mistakes as long as what they write sounds like they’re actually writing.
I never thought I’d say this, but I miss the run-on sentences and tortured, passive sentence construction, and all the other common grammar mistakes I used to see constantly. I’d rather flawed human writing than the flat, passionless, and generic owner’s manual-type pieces that too many students are submitting these days.
By encouraging students to truly share their writing, without fear, I’m trying to take away one potential incentive for turning to AI.
Remind Students That AI Writing Is Bad Writing
Many people are convinced AI is making their writing better, but plagiarism concerns aside, it isn’t. I can tell when someone on social media starts using AI to write their posts, and I also see when a student turns to the AI dark side mid-semester. It’s not an improvement.
This all bears repeating for students. Writing can be an emotional roller coaster. I’ve been a professional freelance writer for close to two decades and have averaged hundreds of published stories per year. Despite this, in the course of nearly every story I’ve ever written — including this one — there was a point when I stopped and thought I should contact my editor and tell them the story is just not working.
AI catches students, and even professional writers, in this vulnerable state, and suddenly, its self-confident and immensely digestible prose looks really good. Don’t fall for it! When it comes to writing, AI is a con artist that makes you believe it knows better than you. It doesn’t, and that’s the message we should be sharing constantly with students.