If using ChatGPT is cheating, what about ghostwriting? The old debate behind a new panic

In February 2023, a little more than a year after the launch of ChatGPT, Vanderbilt University sent an email to its student body in the wake of a fatal campus shooting at Michigan State.

“The recent Michigan shootings are a tragic reminder of the importance of taking care of each other,” the email read in part. In tiny type at the bottom of the message, a disclaimer appeared: “paraphrased from OpenAI’s ChatGPT.”

Students immediately objected.

“There is a sick and twisted irony to making a computer write your message about community and togetherness because you can’t be bothered to reflect on it yourself,” one senior wrote.

A Vanderbilt apology email quickly followed. The university launched a professionalism and ethics investigation. One associate dean couched the misstep as a result of learning pains tied to the adoption of new technology.

Chatbots have spawned a host of ethical questions about writing assistance for teachers, students and authors.

But similar debates about ghostwriting have been taking place for over a century, revealing a persistent discomfort with the idea that the words we read might not belong to the person whose name is attached to them.

Outsourcing authorship

Ghostwriting, a paid arrangement in which one person writes under another’s name, has existed for over a century.

The term seems to have first appeared in the English language...

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