So, you want ChatGPT to help you churn out social media posts or product descriptions—but being accused of plagiarism isn’t exactly on your bucket list. What’s a humble marketer desperately seeking content to do?
Since generative AI started writing code, fanfiction, and trying to split up spouses, many lawsuits have been filed against AI companies for allegedly using copyrighted material to train their chatbots. Understandably, authors and artists across the world would rather not be left clutching an empty bag while Silicon Valley profits off their blood, sweat, and tears.
Copyright infringement is different from plagiarism in that it’s illegal, while plagiarism is not. But just because plagiarism isn’t punishable by law doesn’t mean it’s good—or that it won’t put your company’s reputation at risk.
While the courts and legislative bodies decide what constitutes copyright infringement for generative AI, here’s how to avoid AI plagiarized responses in your content marketing.
Treat the chatbot as a tool, not a writer.
The first—and most crucial—mistake is to forget how chatbots function: by digesting vast amounts of publicly available text and data, then spitting out content derived from that material. How? Via natural language prediction software, which lets the bot learn patterns from text data and predict what comes next in a sentence.
While chatbots can generate coherent text with a logical structure, they lack the necessary creative ingenuity to add anything new or unexpected to their derivative predictions (likely because they don’t experience emotions, imagination, dreams, fear, risk, or mortality as we humans do, but okay, I won’t get too philosophical with this post). This Achilles heel leaves them ill-equipped to create groundbreaking thought leadership or the next revolutionary marketing campaign for your brand.
Moreover, given that chatbots generate material derived from preexisting text, their output comes with a higher risk of plagiarism. Even when they don’t produce a word-for-word copy, they often paraphrase text they were trained on—and plagiarism checkers can flag such instances.
The smartest approach for how to avoid AI plagiarized responses is to stick to what AI does well:
- Assists with research by providing summaries and lists of topics to explore
- Helps with brainstorming different ideas, approaches, or modes of expression
- Generates outlines to help organize and structure text
- Summarizes lengthy scrolls of data or dense text to improve readability and efficiency
So, if you want your marketing department to use AI but avoid plagiarism, treat the bot as a tool to help your writers—not as one of them.
Roll up your sleeves and get ready to revise.
Here’s another hint for how to avoid AI plagiarized responses: thoroughly revise the bot’s output.
Even when fed the most specific and compelling prompts, AI chatbots are known to hallucinate “facts”; generate repetitive, banal, clichéd, or biased material; produce output with grammatical errors; and plagiarize text. But then, can we really blame the bot for these writing faux pas when it’s meant to be a tool, not a writer?
Say you want to publish a series of 30 blog posts next quarter that markets your brand more effectively to inexperienced but hungry Gen-Z buyers—and time is of the essence. AI can help your writing team generate research on your target audience, come up with ideas for posts, and sketch outlines to alleviate the pain of the blank page—all steps that can boost your writing team’s efficiency, when done right.
But if your team then decides to prompt the bot for first drafts, they should go in with eyes wide open: they’re settling for B-level drafts at best—content that lacks creative zing and strategic sizzle. The output will likely contain instances of plagiarism, too, which makes revising AI-generated content with a heavy pen all the more essential. Plus, Google now penalizes lower quality content that’s not helpful or trustworthy, so unedited AI output can plummet your SERP ranking.
The bottom line: it’s worth putting in the extra revision time to protect your brand’s reputation and publish higher quality content that reaches audiences and moves them to act.
Rigorously research, fact check, and cite sources.
Along with careful revision, task your writing team with these extra steps to ensure your content doesn’t plagiarize and come back to haunt your brand:
- Verify all facts, quotations, and data included in AI-generated content
- Track down sources for any research material a chatbot provides
- Include legitimate sources for all published content
Keep in mind this general principle for how to avoid AI plagiarized responses: AI-generated material is meant to kickstart the research and writing process—not to implement into your marketing as-is. If you want high-quality content that connects, inspires, and converts, there’s not really a shortcut.
Just as the tastiest homemade soups come from the extra time to simmer, the best and most strategic writing requires a lot more than prompting a bot and copy-pasting its response. To publish plagiarism-free content that cuts through instead of contributes to the noise, you need writers capable of creative insight, thorough analysis, careful execution, and authentic connection.
Want writers who can hit these marks—and boost your ROI? Contact the MarketSmiths team today.
