AI for College Students

Plagiarism is the act of presenting someone else's work, ideas, or expressions as one's own without proper attribution. This includes:

• Copying text verbatim without quotation marks and citations
• Paraphrasing without citation
• Using ideas, concepts, or structures without acknowledging the source

Types of Plagiarism

• Global plagiarism: passing off an entire text by someone else as your own work. Example: Taking a friend's paper, changing the name at the top to your own, and turning it in.

• Verbatim plagiarism: directly copying someone else’s words. Example: Copying paragraphs, or even sentences, from an article and pasting them into your paper without including a citation.

• Paraphrasing plagiarism: rephrasing someone else’s ideas to present them as your own. Example: Taking a unique concept from a book, building an argument around that concept, and using that as part of your paper.

• Patchwork plagiarism: stitching together parts of different sources to create your text. Example: Taking part of a sentence from source A and part of a sentence from source B, making those two parts fit together into a new sentence and not giving credit to either source.

• Self-plagiarism: recycling your own past work. Example: Using any part of anything you have written before for a new project. If you reuse any of your work, you must cite yourself.

How AI can lead to unintentional plagiarism

• Overreliance on AI-generated content without critical evaluation
• Difficulty in determining the originality of AI-generated text
• Blurred lines between assistance and authorship when using AI tools

AI detectors do exist, and professors are authorized to use them if they wish. While the accuracy of detectors is high, none of them are 100% accurate, and while there is no way to "prove" a student used AI in the completion of their work, there are indicators professors have developed over their years of experience.

If a professor suspects a student has used AI in an unauthorized way, they are directed to have a discussion with the student. However, some professors may choose to take a more accusatorial approach. If a professor requests a meeting with you, be sure to accept their invitation, arrive on time, and be prepared.

To support your claim that you completed your own work, you should bring to the meeting:

• Rough drafts or previous versions of your work
• Research notes
• A familiarity with your work and an ability to discuss it
• If you used AI, a detailed description of which AI(s) you used, your prompts, and how you used the output from the AI. Being able to bring up your history of AI conversations would be helpful. Keep in mind, not all AI make your conversation available.
• If you used writing assistance software, such as Grammarly, notify your professor. Suggestions from these tools can be flagged by AI.

Be honest and open with your professor. This can be a scary conversation, but honesty is definitely your best policy. If you thought you were doing the right thing, explain your intentions and ask for guidance. You may still receive a penalty to your grade (that is the professor's prerogative) but you will have an opportunity to learn from the experience.

If you would like to run your paper through an AI detector before submitting it, GPTZero offers free analyses.