AI (Artificial Intelligence) Versus AI (Academic Integrity) and Vice versa

Numerous open-AI writing assistants (software) hit the market in 2022 onwards and many users accepted these tools as innovative ways of simplifying their work. One of them being Chat-GPT, although people are using Chat-GPT  as a misnomer to represent all open-AI writing tools. These tools can (a) create long-form text, (b) research some keywords and create content around it or (c) make images from text. Other examples of commonly used open-AI tools include (though not exclusive) Article Forge, Hypotenuse AI, Ink for All, AI Writer, Copy-smith, etc. Although many of them may require additional editing, the benefits of using AI writers, such as time and cost savings are huge. With numerous writing tools available today, content creation for assignments can become too easy and the students may use it for cheating – that is the main issue of these open-AI writing tools.
 
Like, contract cheating, using AI to write an assignment can only be considered as academic misconduct than plagiarism because there is less original work is being copied. But at the same time, it is not the student’s original work. The only difference between contract cheating and open-AI writing tools is that in the former, humans are writing the essays whilst the latter is generated by a computer. To that end, using AI writing to complete an assignment and submit as one’s own work qualifies as academic misconduct. Yet latest open-AI tools such as ChatGPT-4, are  capable of high-level writing in a way, it is harder to detect as machine generated text. Although it might be difficult for AI to generate advanced essays for applied subjects such as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths), artificial intelligence is a threat to academic in integrity. Students and academics should own their work and abide by basic ethical principles. Following short videos explains more about open-AI writing tools using Chat-GPT as examples.
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