Letter on AI Content

Thank you for your apology, which seems sincere. I accept.

I spent a long career as a professor and academic dean, and so I know from experience that many students struggle with the concept of plagiarism. This seems to be doubly true for international students who often bring different cultural expectations.

Every item you post on Writing.Com has a copyright notice at the bottom of the page. This is more than just a formality. It's an affirmative assertion that the content is original, created by you, and that you own it. When I ran your item through tests that detect AI content, they reported it was 100% AI generated. That means the content was not created by you, even if the plot and characters were. Instead, the specific words were all created by a machine. That makes your posting--which includes the copyright notice--dishonest. I'm willing to believe you didn't understand this, but it remains a fact that the implicit claims in the post are not true.

The proper way to do this is to include in the item an acknowledgement that the content was generated by AI based on characters and plot that you provided. That identifies the portions of the content that are original and created by you and the parts created by other means. It would be best if this were at the front of the item, so readers know it going in. Such a notice would have certainly informed my response to your review request and saved us both considerable grief.

Everyone makes mistakes. What's important is to learn from those mistakes going forward. I'm providing this additiional information in the hope that you will take heart and properly acknowledge the use of AI in the preparation of your items.

While I accept your apology, I know from my experience as professor and dean that having consequences is an important part of the learning experience. Students at my university who have committed plagiarism--which is what this is---are most often suspended for a year. With that in mind, I will not accept new review requests from you until one year from this date.

In the meantime, you will have an opportunity to work on your English skills. I appreciate that is difficult, but not insurmountable. I am close friends with a German author on here. When I first met her a dozen years ago, most of my interactions involved improving her English. Today, she's an accomplished author and I doubt many members realize English is not her native language. I can tell, having known her for so long, that her writing brings a cultural and linguistic heritage different from mine. Indeed, that's part of the joy of reading her work. Joseph Conrad, one of the greatest English-language novelests, was not a native English speaker--he grew up in Poland. Who knows? Perhaps you will be the next Joseph Conrad.

I hope you take this opportunity to move on, to learn, and to grow.

Max Griffin