An article in today’s Economic Times draws attention to the problem of Artificial intelligence-related plagiarism. I was happy to read it, as this subject has been bothering me for some time. As a professor, one cannot overemphasize the importance of authenticity, independent analysis, and integrity while learning and writing. Many students struggle with referencing. As a professor, I can easily distinguish AI-generated content in an assignment. I wonder if it would help if all educational institutions insist on formally acknowledging the query and AI tool used by reference, something already being practiced in many universities. But this rule still applies to students and not the AI tools they use.

Cajoling vs. Mandating

Currently, one is encouraged to persuade ChatGPT to quote sources through clever, prompt engineering. However, why can’t this be the globally accepted norm or standard rather than placing the burden on the querist? Those encouraging international collaboration on digital governance should ponder this issue.

 What is most intriguing, however, is that this plagiarism/copyright concern is spoken or written about by almost all stakeholders selectively in the context of journalistic/publisher content or from a commercial/business viewpoint. Take, for example, the well known New York Times lawsuit claiming that,

‘OpenAI and Microsoft’s technology that powers ChatGPT and Bing Chat, now called Copilot, “can generate output that recites Times content verbatim, closely summarizes it, and mimics its expressive style.”

License to copy?

What about an individual’s blog protected under a Creative Commons license? There have been class action lawsuits in this regard, such as the one filed by nonfiction writers against Open AI, where it is observed that,

 “Nonfiction authors often spend years conceiving, researching, and writing their creations. While OpenAI and Microsoft refuse to pay nonfiction authors, their AI platform is worth a fortune. The basis of the OpenAI platform is nothing less than the rampant theft of copyrighted works.”  

Is it fair that the creators of AI tools can scrape human content and reproduce it without any value addition or acknowledgment of its source? Individuals have almost lost the right to their data online. Each one of us is already a much-traded digital entity and global data protection laws have been slow to catch up.  

Ex Ante Frameworks: Standards and Laws

Why should we be forced to fight in court and wait for years while our thoughts and efforts are stolen? This issue needs to be addressed immediately as AI gathers currency and ubiquity. Considering the protection of human creativity, addressing the potential consequences of AI-generated content on individual human rights is crucial. What if an international law mandated all generative AI to formally reference sources at every stage, including in their training process, analysis, and the outputs they produce? This would not only safeguard the rights of content creators but also assist users of AI in verifying the accuracy and sources of the information they receive.