Avoiding Plagiarism

Can you plagiarize your own work? Yes! This is called self-plagiarism, which is when someone re-uses large parts of their own work, without citing the original text.

Plagiarism often involves using someone else’s words or ideas without proper citation, but you can also plagiarize yourself. Self-plagiarism means reusing work that you have already published or submitted for a class.

This article was written by the ChatGPT chatbot, in response to prompts from MK (Michael R. King). That human-chatbot conversation is presented here, without editing.

With fears in academia growing about a new AI chatbot that can write convincing essays – even if some facts it uses aren’t strictly true – the Silicon Valley firm behind a chatbot released last month are racing to “fingerprint” its output to head off a wave of “AIgiarism” – or AI-assisted plagiarism.

A growing concern is the use of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots to write entire essays and articles. While it may be tempting to use AI in this way, please be aware that this is also considered a form of plagiarism.

Moreover, while the content created by AI isn’t plagiarized, the same can’t be said about students who are claiming this content to be their own without giving any credit to the AI tool that they used. If the AI tool isn’t listed as a co-author and given “full acknowledgment” (as per the definition by Oxford) it would be considered academic dishonesty at best and plagiarism at worst.