Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Plagiarism Checks

Abstract

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) tools have brought major changes to how content is created in fields like education, journalism, and creative writing. Popular platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Writer, Copyleaks, GPTZero, and CrossPlag are now commonly used to generate well-structured and meaningful text with minimal effort. These tools have made writing faster and more efficient, benefiting students, teachers, and professionals alike. However, the growing use of AI-generated content has also raised concerns about maintaining academic honesty. It has become more challenging to detect plagiarism, as some AI-generated text can closely resemble human writing, making it difficult to determine whether the work is original or machine-produced.

The integration of AI tools, especially large language models like ChatGPT, has seen a notable increase in medical and dental research. A bibliometric study analyzing 299,695 PubMed-indexed dental research abstracts from 2018 to 2024 found that the frequency of AI-associated keywords rose from 47.1 to 224.2 per 10,000 papers after ChatGPT's release, indicating a substantial rise in AI-assisted writing. Similarly, in the medical field, AI tools are increasingly employed for tasks such as literature reviews, drafting, editing, and reference management, enhancing the efficiency of research processes. While these tools offer numerous advantages, including improved productivity and accessibility, they also raise concerns about accuracy, bias, and the potential for plagiarism, underscoring the need for clear guidelines and ethical standards in their use.

The increasing prevalence of AI-generated content in academic and professional writing has led to a notable rise in similarity indices reported by plagiarism detection tools. This trend is primarily due to AI models like ChatGPT producing text that closely mirror existing literature in structure and phrasing, even without direct copying. As a result, plagiarism detection systems often flag AI-generated content for high similarity, complicating the assessment of originality.

To tackle the issue of distinguishing between human and AI-written content, various detection tools have been created. For example, Copyleaks uses sophisticated algorithms to study writing styles and reports high accuracy in identifying AI-generated material. GPTZero examines features such as perplexity and burstiness to estimate whether text was written by a human or an AI. Similarly, Originality.ai offers a combined approach, checking for both AI involvement and plagiarism to provide a detailed evaluation of a text’s originality.

However, the effectiveness of these detection tools varies, and their accuracy is subject to ongoing evaluation. As AI-generated content becomes more sophisticated, continuous refinement of detection methodologies is essential to ensure reliable differentiation between human and AI-authored text.

In conclusion, while AI tools like ChatGPT offer significant benefits in enhancing productivity and accessibility in content creation, they also present challenges in maintaining academic integrity. The rise in AI-generated content necessitates the development of clear guidelines and ethical standards to address issues related to plagiarism and originality. Ongoing evaluation and refinement of detection tools are crucial to uphold the integrity of academic and professional writing in the age of AI.

As AI tools become more common in writing and research, it's important to update our copyright laws to keep up with these changes. This means working together—lawmakers, legal experts, technology developers, and content creators—to create clear rules about who owns what when AI is involved. We need to ensure that the data used to train AI is handled transparently and ethically. By setting these standards, we can protect the rights of human creators while also embracing the benefits that AI brings. The goal is to make AI a helpful assistant that enhances human creativity, not something that replaces or undermines it.