The Truth About Using Artificial Intelligence

Picture these three scenarios involving Artificial Intelligence (AI):

1. You are an educator grading essays and you find out that some of your students are using AI to write their essays for them. The students do not edit what they received from AI, submitting the plagiarized work as is.
2. You manage several contracted content-writers for your financial news magazine. Most of the content you receive is high quality and relevant, but one contractor sends in content with factual errors and strange phrasing. You find out the contractor is using AI to generate content before sending it off to you unedited.
3. You are the head of Marketing at a sports apparel company. The social media intern, who had been doing great until 2023 started, has had a sudden dip in creative output. They rely on AI-generated ideas, but with frequent outages of their favorite application, they are unable to produce creative copy.

In all of these possible situations, over-reliance on an emerging technology paired with a lack of transparency could lead to detrimental outcomes. Educators have to report plagiarism, news organizations’ reputations rest on dedication to the truth through reporting, and marketers rely on creativity through human ingenuity.

In the coming months and years, the rules of engagement with AI-generated content will become clearer. For now, it is questionable about who owns the content that is generated. Can essays and news articles truly be plagiarism-free if they are generated by AI? Will clients be comfortable using AI-generated imagery and copy if they are not guaranteed ownership of the content?

Is Using AI Ethical?

It is an exciting time to be at the forefront of technological advancements, but those who use AI tools must do so with transparency in its early stages of mass adoption. Cheating on essays often only hurts the cheater. However, plagiarized copy for news organizations or businesses can hurt not only the offender’s reputation, but that of the organization or business as well!

The golden rule heading into the year of AI is to practice complete transparency about the use of AI in any deliverable produced. Even at the idea-generating phase of a project, it is important to note when AI was involved in the process.