There is a fair amount of concern on the part of quite a few members about the subject of AI generated posts on BC and the associated risks of copyright and plagiarism. This is a subject that has been debated at some length by the Mods and perhaps we forget that these discussions are only available to the Mods and this is one subject that deserves wider viewing. Among the conclusions we reached are the following -
The use of AI – such as ChatGPT and others – is not in itself inherently wrong. Hamluis summed it up as well as anybody when he said -
It matters not whether the substance of posted content is AI-generated or a summary put together by a posting member...what matters is the propriety and relevance of the response in regard to questions/discussions raised within the topic.
He also pointed out that copy/paste is also not inherently wrong as some prefer, as I am doing at the moment, to generate posts in a word processor and then paste them into a topic when you feel the text is sufficiently polished.
There is a real problem with plagiarism or breach of copyright. If you can find an exact match for the posted text elsewhere on the web than that is plagiarism. The laws on copyright vary somewhat from one jurisdiction to another but BC is a US registered site and US laws, including fair use, apply. If you are quoting someone it is only right to provide a link to the source and this should be done in all cases. There are various tests for AI generated text but at the moment none of them are sufficiently reliable to give a definite answer as my own experience of using them has shown me.
In summary.
By itself, the use of AI generated text is not against rules of BC, what matters is the relevance of the posted text
Word for word copying of someone else’s text without attribution is against the rules.
And spam is always spam, the only thing we have a ‘shoot on sight’ policy on in BC.
Comments ?
Chris Cosgrove
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