ChatGPT – How to avoid the plagiarism trap

Generative AI is all the rage now thanks to ChatGPT (and others).

Now, while ChatGPT opens a world of possibilities, this new technology isn’t foolproof and without flaws – especially when it comes to generating original content.

One of the main issues here is the risk of plagiarism, as ChatGPT tends to reuse text created by others.

To test this, I asked ChatGPT to write an article and checked the text it produced for plagiarism using the free tool Plagiarism Checker by Grammarly.

It reported “Significant plagiarism found”.

Now, that’s bad!

Because it means you cannot trust the ChatGPT output to be original right off the bat.

So, to see if I could get ChatGPT to produce original content, I then used the prompt “Please rewrite your article in your own words”.

When checking the rewritten text for plagiarism using the same free tool Plagiarism Checker by Grammarly, I got this …

Much better!

Now, what if having ChatGPT rewriting the article doesn't work, there's still plagiarism found?

In that case, if you're on the free version I'd suggest you first check what section of the text contains plagiarism by checking each section of the text individually using Grammarly.

When you find a section with plagiarism, check that section using Grammarly by checking the first paragrah of the section, then the two first paragraphs, then the three first paragraphs and so on until you find the paragraph with plagiarism.

If the paragraph is big, do the same check for plagiarism sentence by sentence.

Then rewrite the text containing plagiarism yourself and check again.

This might seem like a tedious process, but it works and it confirms that it is possible to have ChatGPT help you produce original content.

You just need to be aware of the plagiarism issue and take those extra steps to ensure that the ChatGPT text you’re using is original.?

Also, you might consider informing your reader that the text is created using ChatGPT.

Finally, as a business owner or CEO, you should ensure the use of content created by AI and checking it for plagiarism is handled in the AI section of your digital strategy - as well as in your content processes and procedures.