With tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, You could easily generate a fake term paper, or text --- And when should it be? When, If Ever, Is It illegal to use AI-generated college essay.

You open your computer, SNAP. You check the hinges, you think you’ve broken something: but you haven’t. The stress was getting to your head, every sound you heard was a hundred times as loud. Your heart pumps blood and it sounds like a vein burst, a knuckle cracks and it sounds like the whole bone broke.  

You come home from the most exhausting day of high school, the last exam day. Being a senior meant a lot. You were graduating, you were leaving behind all those juniors who looked up to you for advice. Most importantly, you were going to college. The simple thought of it made sweat run down like tears from your forehead. 

Maybe college isn’t that bad; you’ve heard your older sister talk about how she matured a lot in college and how you’ll never be able to relive your life in college. You decided to search about college experiences on forums like Reddit, Tumblr, and Quora. Hearing other people's experiences would make you feel better you suppose.

Going on these forums, everyone talked about how calm and relaxed college was as compared to high school but a certain thread came to your attention. Recently uploaded on Reddit as of 28th of May 2024 uploaded by @burneraccount333, the title read out “With tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini, You could easily generate a fake term paper, or text. When is it ever illegal to use AI-generated college essays.”

The text accompanied with the title read “Hey there everyone! I’m Jonas and I’m 18. I’m a law major, studying criminal law/ justice/ etc, I’ve had to make a lot of research projects and write a lot of extremely important essays, essays that guarantee whether or not I make it out of college or even graduate. These essays are published in the schools paper and will be referred to professionals in the field for their work. Is it ever illegal or wrong to use AI to completley generate any of these papers for me. I live with roomates who are always partying and I’ve never had the time to ever study or individually work and cater to any of these.”

You had completley forgotten how strict college could be with AI. As you lived in an always busy household, there wasn’t anyone to help you with your work. You stayed awake through the nights with your friends on Instagram. While you caught up with your sleep on the school desks during class, You always got away with doing your tests with AI and your homework. Even if you got in trouble, the repercussions wouldn’t be as strict. Now in college. What would you ever do? You go through the thread and there are many responses. The first response to the thread was published by @user18729 who wrote:

“I think its never wrong to use AI, or technically ‘illegal’ because AI is generally a tool thats used to collect information altogether. If researching is allowed then AI should be too. In the end AI just compiles research for the ease of a person. I think even copy pasting is fine as long as the source is credited.”

You subconsciously nod your head in agreement, thats a pretty fair statement.

@a33x1e replied to the question saying

 “I believe its always wrong to use AI. I mean in general, AI is in its early stages of research development so it won’t always provide factual information which in the hands of a highly qualified professor, will obviously show. You shouldn’t risk it as a criminal LAW major. ”

You felt all of these replies to the thread never really addressed the point, so you got to your keyboard and began to type.

“Hi Jonas. Firstly I would like to say that it isn’t ILLEGAL to really use AI for any of these works. It’s just immoral. Immoral in the sense that it’s looked down upon when you rely on other sources to do your work rather than put an individual effort into it. While dealing with something like Law it’s really appreciated if you put your own efforts into your work. The problem is that you’ve grown more dependent on AI as a result of not being able to say NO to your roommates for their actions. Remember, that if they want to party they could do it anywhere. Your initial mission should be focused towards getting through college through pure effort and hard work like every other student. If your work is ever used to assist in a case for law for example, it could probably cause issues as many comments have stated that AI lacks the ability to recognize biasded information and isn’t updated. You could get yourself intro trouble for using AI whereas you could actually avoid all this hassle if you did the research on your own accord. It’s fine to use AI from time to time but to make excuses to avoid actually doing work, is where it really shows your character as an individual and as a student in a university environment.”

You got a reply back from Jonas on reddit a few minutes later, he told you he really enjoyed reading your response and you discussed it back and forth. It all seemed to work out. You instantly become good friends and Jonas tells you about his college life, and how everything really is. It makes you less scared knowing theres someone with you and that you have a mentor throughout this terrifying journey.