Plagiarism and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Legal framework remains unchanged

From a legal perspective, nothing has changed with regard to scientific integrity and plagiarism. In other words, the legal requirements still stand, including the following:

• Copyright law and personal rights
• Data protection and information security
• ETH Zurich's guidelines on scientific integrity
• Rules set out to prevent plagiarism
• Citation rules of the various citation styles
• ETH Zurich’s declaration of originality

You as an author you are responsible for your scientific research, your search for information, and for your scientific text. Therefore, you want to consider following aspects about AI-based instruments regarding plagiarism:

• AI-based tools are not considered as authors or co-authors and may not be listed as such in publications.
• The tools use existing texts and generate new outputs based on your prompts. By doing this, the tools do not create new work in the sense of copyright law, which is why the tools are not considered as authors.
• The use of an AI-based instrument does not constitute of plagiarism per se. However, you should consider that the tools do not (reliably) identify texts taken verbatim or in terms of content as citations and the output can be very close to an original. This can lead to a match in a plagiarism check.

Taking responsibility – checking output

The use of AI-based tools means that they contribute to the creation of your scientific text. Therefore, please follow the guidelines below:

• Be transparent and honest: Identify the AI-based tools used and document for which tasks you have used them.
• Ask your supervisor or the persons responsible for this issue in your department which AI-based tools you are allowed to be used in your scientific work and in what form you have to declare them.
• Clarify with your supervisor or the persons responsible for this issue in your department whether you need to include the prompts and possibly also the generated text in an appendix to your thesis or scientific publication.

In the following table you will find a suggestion on how to document the use of AI-based tools. The proposed declaration does not constitute an official recommendation by ETH Zurich. The selection of tools does not constitute a recommendation for their use.
Alternatively, you can describe the use of AI-based tools as free text.

• Check what requirements exist regarding the use of AI-based tools in your department, your scientific field or the journal in which you publish.
• Adhere to the specified rules of your citation style for the use of AI-based tools.
• Text that you feed into AI-based tools can potentially be saved by them and therefore reused. You should therefore consider whether your text contains sensitive or confidential information and data before submitting it to an AI-based tool.
• Read the generated output carefully and check it for accuracy. This applies in particular to references, as they may be incomplete or incorrect.
• Many sources have not yet been digitized or are not accessible online. Ask your supervisor, other persons in your department or the ETH library what alternative sources exist and how you can gain access to them.