Over the course of the past few months, AI generators have been taking over in many high schools and colleges. This has posed a problem for the writing world, as AI is very close to matching how a human would write, one of the main issues seems to be college students using AI generators to cheat, or to simply cut corners in essays and assignments. 

One major issue up for debate is whether or not to consider AI writing as plagiarism or not. This is simply because in our society plagiarism is seen as unethical and wrong because you are stealing the work that someone else has previously created and trying to take credit for it. Most of these AI apps claim that they do not plagiarize because they are filed from many different sources and not just the work of one person.

“Using an A.I. program is not ‘plagiarism’ in the traditional sense- there’s no previous work for the student to copy, and thus no original for the teachers’ plagiarism detectors to catch,” Aki Peritz said in his article in Slate.com.  

While it is still wrong to use these methods regardless of plagiarism issues or not, there are still many more issues being caused by this epidemic of academic dishonesty. For starters, most students who would usually get B’s and C’s are magically becoming straight A students overnight, this is due to the fact that they no longer have to think about what they are going to write, they just simply type in what they need and a minute later they have a full essay right at their fingertips. 

One example that thoroughly drives the point of how accurate some AI generators can be compared to human writing is in these statements that were written using a popular AI generating app called ‘Ask AI’. All the app requires is a prompt or even simply a question/statement and then it comes back to you as quickly as you can ask. 

The prompt I used for this example was “Write a news article on how using AI generators for writing is being used improperly.” This is what was generated:

“In recent months Artificial Intelligence (AI) writing generators have been touted as a game-changer in the world of content creation, providing a quick and efficient way to produce high-quality content. However recent reports suggest that the technology is being used improperly, leading to concerns about its impact on the quality of content and the ethics of its use.”

“According to a recent study, a growing number of individuals and organizations are using AI writing generators to produce fake news stories and reviews, as well as to create essays for students. The study found that some of the AI writing generators are being used to generate content that is deliberately misleading, with the aim of manipulating public opinion or promoting products that do not exist.”  

Notice how even though it was being run through an AI generator itself it still understood how to make it more human-like, and even sometimes writes better than a human can.

Needless to say, many high schools and colleges will most likely try to look into different methods of how to stop these AI generated essays and assignments from slipping by unnoticed. Some colleges and universities have considered reverting back to written assignments and oral exams, while this might fix some of the issues there will most likely still be students that find loopholes around it. The only real way to fix it is to simply take away the technology and watch over the classrooms to make sure no one cheats–just like it used to be.