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Plagiarism

Direct Plagiarism in the Age of AI

Learn what direct plagiarism is and how AI is changing plagiarism detection. Then, get tips on how to transparently incorporate AI in the creative process.

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Introduction

Our text compare tool is a fantastic, lightweight tool that provides plagiarism checks between two documents. Whether you are a student, blogger or publisher, this tool offers a great solution to detect and compare similarities between any two pieces of text. In this article, I will discuss the different ways to use the tool, the primary features of the tool and who this tool is for. There is an FAQ at the bottom if you run into any issues when trying to use the tool.

What makes Originality.ai’s text comparison tool stand out?

Keyword density helper – This tool comes with a built-in keyword density helper in some ways similar to the likes of SurferSEO or MarketMuse the difference being, ours is free! This feature shows the user the frequency of single or two word keywords in a document, meaning you can easily compare an article you have written against a competitor to see the major differences in keyword densities. This is especially useful for SEO’s who are looking to optimize their blog content for search engines and improve the blog’s visibility.

Ways to compare

File compare – Text comparison between files is a breeze with our tool. Simply select the files you would like to compare, hit “Upload” and our tool will automatically insert the content into the text area, then simply hit “Compare” and let our tool show you where the differences in the text are. By uploading a file, you can still check the keyword density in your content.

URL compare

Comparing text between URLs is effortless with our tool. Simply paste the URL you would like to get the content from (in our example we use a fantastic blog post by Sherice Jacob found here) hit “Submit URL” and our tool will automatically retrieve the contents of the page and paste it into the text area, then simply click “Compare” and let our tool highlight the difference between the URLs. This feature is especially useful for checking keyword density between pages!

Simple text compare

You can also easily compare text by copying and pasting it into each field, as demonstrated below.

Features of Originality.ai’s Text Compare Tool

Ease of use

Our text compare tool is created with the user in mind, it is designed to be accessible to everyone. Our tool allows users to upload files or enter a URL to extract text, this along with the lightweight design ensures a seamless experience. The interface is simple and straightforward, making it easy for users to compare text and detect the diff.

Multiple text file format support

Our tool provides support for a variety of different text files and microsoft word formats including pdf file, .docx, .odt, .doc, and .txt, giving users the ability to compare text from different sources with ease. This makes it a great solution for students, bloggers, and publishers who are looking for file comparison in different formats.

Protects intellectual property

Our text comparison tool helps you protect your intellectual property and helps prevent plagiarism. This tool provides an accurate comparison of texts, making it easy to ensure that your work is original and not copied from other sources. Our tool is a valuable resource for anyone looking to maintain the originality of their content.

User Data Privacy

Our text compare tool is secure and protects user data privacy. No data is ever saved to the tool, the users’ text is only scanned and pasted into the tool’s text area. This makes certain that users can use our tool with confidence, knowing their data is safe and secure.

Compatibility

Our text comparison tool is designed to work seamlessly across all size devices, ensuring maximum compatibility no matter your screen size. Whether you are using a large desktop monitor, a small laptop, a tablet or a smartphone, this tool adjusts to your screen size. This means that users can compare texts and detect the diff anywhere without the need for specialized hardware or software. This level of accessibility makes it an ideal solution for students or bloggers who value the originality of their work and need to compare text online anywhere at any time.

As AI’s ability to generate content continues to become more advanced and sophisticated, it creates complex questions that professionals, from content marketers to professors to legal scholars, grapple with, such as — what exactly is direct plagiarism in the age of AI?

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at:

  • What direct plagiarism is
  • How plagiarism detection began
  • How AI is changing the rules when it comes to detecting plagiarism
  • How to maintain creativity and originality in your work, even when using AI tools

What Is Direct Plagiarism? 

When people ask, “What is it called when you copy someone’s work?” Direct plagiarism is the answer. This type of plagiarism involves copying someone else’s work word-for-word without giving them credit or citing them. 

Direct plagiarism is problematic and can cause intellectual property issues. Further, when a writer or content creator passes off someone else’s work as their own, it damages credibility and integrity.

It’s often associated with the world of academia, but it happens beyond high schools and colleges. It can even occur in journalism and other fields like coding. From both an ethical and legal standpoint, the repercussions of plagiarism can be serious and severe. 

In the academic world, a student may fail an assignment or a class. They could even face suspension or expulsion from their academic institution. In the professional world, consequences can include losing a job or facing legal action. 

AI’s entrance, quick adoption, and integration into the world have considerably blurred the lines between plagiarism and how we define it. First, to provide context, let’s look at how plagiarism detectors evolved to identify direct plagiarism and how the rise of AI is changing the content landscape. 

How Plagiarism Detectors Evolved to Check for Direct Plagiarism

The beginning of plagiarism detection

In the early days of plagiarism detection, editors, educators, and other professionals had to compare texts line by line to uncover any similarities. It was time-consuming, tedious and prone to error. When the internet arrived, the explosion of digital content meant that traditional methods just couldn’t keep up and in response the first software plagiarism detectors were released onto the market. 

These programs were fairly basic and used simple algorithms to compare written text to a limited database. As technology progressed and more content was published online, these tools advanced, and the databases they could search grew as well.

Innovations in plagiarism detection allowed for faster, more complete detection of copied content, and for a time, plagiarism detection tools and platforms were commonly used by colleges, universities, journalists, and other professionals. 

Plagiarism detection and the rise of AI

Then, AI arrived on the scene, bringing with it the question, ‘What do you do if you suspect plagiarism in a paper, report, or other piece of content, but nothing is found in the database?’

AI writing tools pull from vast training knowledge to craft responses and content. This posed problems for early systems because AI generates content with different words in contrast to direct plagiarism, which uses exact word-for-word sentences. That means, in theory, AI could potentially bypass some direct plagiarism programs. 

  • AI content generation works like fingerprints — even with the exact same prompting, the text it produces differs. 
  • What’s more, AI isn’t a person, which changes copyright concepts and the meaning of who owns AI content

If you use content generated by AI, is it considered plagiarism? This is the kind of question that legal scholars are still grappling with today. 

Fortunately, the same AI that has evolved to churn out human-sounding content can also be used to address plagiarism. 

The Introduction of AI in Identifying Plagiarism

Traditional plagiarism detectors (that search a specific database) don’t always scan the sheer volume of content that exists online. This is where AI-powered plagiarism detection comes in to help identify or prevent plagiarism

AI-powered detection can uncover different types of plagiarism

Through machine learning algorithms and NLP (Natural Language Processing), AI can dig deeper into content. Depending on the detector, it can analyze context, linguistic style, and even the nuances of language to uncover direct plagiarism, paraphrasing, or other types of plagiarism

AI expands plagiarism detection beyond limited databases

AI is well suited to processing incredible swaths of data from multiple sources. Rather than relying on a single (or a collection of) databases, advancing AI technology opens up the opportunity to expand plagiarism detection to include:

  • Academic documents or journals
  • Published research papers
  • E-books
  • Content published on the internet (news, blog posts, or even social media)

Some AI-based plagiarism detectors can even compare patterns in writing styles. AI’s incredible sophistication and ability to deeply analyze content make it an invaluable tool in the fight against direct and other types of plagiarism. 

Note: Keep in mind that plagiarism detector capabilities vary across the market. Not all AI plagiarism detectors cross-check information from the same range of sources.

Detecting AI-generated text and plagiarism

Identifying plagiarism is one piece of the puzzle. As AI becomes more popular with new versions of ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Claude that sound smarter, more authentic, and human-like, it’s important to pair plagiarism and AI-generated text detection. 

To continue upholding the high standards of professional and academic work, tools like Originality.ai’s AI Content Checker offer both plagiarism and AI-generated text detection with their suite of tools.

Redefining Plagiarism in a World With AI

The problem then becomes, in a world where AI can create almost anything, is it really plagiarism if a machine writes (or draws) it? With the rapid developments in AI, the future of what plagiarism looks like is still up for debate. 

To address plagiarism in the age of AI, there are several factors to consider:

  • The popular definition of unique, original content needs clarity.
  • Legal guidelines around intellectual property and copyright need to stay current with AI developments.
  • Schools, colleges, businesses, and media organizations need frameworks that include the acceptable use of AI.
  • Criteria for transparently disclosing AI needs to evolve so that readers and viewers can make informed decisions. 

To that end, plagiarism detection systems need to keep up. Try complementing plagiarism detection with the use of AI checkers and fact-checking tools.

AI Assistance vs. Plagiarism

With these questions comes an important distinction — when is it acceptable for AI to provide assistance and what is the clear definition of plagiarism? 

AI assistance refers to using AI tools to do things like:

  • Generating ideas for brainstorming.
  • Drafting content briefs.
  • Creating basic frameworks or article outlines.

As long as users are transparent about the use of AI in these cases, it’s a valuable and helpful tool that builds on content creation advancements like using a computer to type instead of writing copy by hand. 

This contrasts the concept of direct plagiarism and AI, which raises ethical concerns. Instances of AI use that blend with the ever-evolving concept of plagiarism include:

  • Having AI write an entire article or essay (when academic guidelines do not permit it).
  • Creating an image and then passing it off as one’s own work.

As content creators, it’s important to lay a path forward for the responsible and transparent use of AI. That way, we can continue to benefit from human ingenuity and creativity. 

Final Thoughts — Balancing Creativity With AI Content

AI is an increasingly helpful tool when used properly in the creative process. It provides fresh new ideas, refines human language to sound more polished or professional, and offers students detailed explanations of challenging concepts to spark interest in further research. 

However, creators need to be aware of the ‘line in the sand.’ Use it as a tool to enhance rather than a complete replacement for the creative process. 

View AI as a collaborator, not a standalone creator. AI can’t and shouldn’t replace authors, publishers, or other creators. We still need and greatly benefit from human creativity, authenticity, and originality.

Sherice Jacob

Sherice Jacob is a seasoned copywriter and content professional fluent in English, Spanish, and Catalan, with over 25 years of experience crafting high-converting copy. Passionate about AI, she enjoys exploring the new innovations and possibilities it brings to the world of content creation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to fill out the entire form?

No, that’s one of the benefits, only fill out the areas which you think will be relevant to the prompts you require.

Why is the English so poor for some prompts?

When making the tool we had to make each prompt as general as possible to be able to include every kind of input. Not to worry though ChatGPT is smart and will still understand the prompt.

In The Press

Originality.ai has been featured for its accurate ability to detect GPT-3, Chat GPT and GPT-4 generated content. See some of the coverage below…

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Featured by Leading Publications

Originality.ai did a fantastic job on all three prompts, precisely detecting them as AI-written. Additionally, after I checked with actual human-written textual content, it did determine it as 100% human-generated, which is important.

Vahan Petrosyan

searchenginejournal.com

I use this tool most frequently to check for AI content personally. My most frequent use-case is checking content submitted by freelance writers we work with for AI and plagiarism.

Tom Demers

searchengineland.com

After extensive research and testing, we determined Originality.ai to be the most accurate technology.

Rock Content Team

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Jon Gillham, Founder of Originality.ai came up with a tool to detect whether the content is written by humans or AI tools. It’s built on such technology that can specifically detect content by ChatGPT-3 — by giving you a spam score of 0-100, with an accuracy of 94%.

Felix Rose-Collins

ranktracker.com

ChatGPT lacks empathy and originality. It’s also recognized as AI-generated content most of the time by plagiarism and AI detectors like Originality.ai

Ashley Stahl

forbes.com

Originality.ai Do give them a shot! 

Sri Krishna

venturebeat.com

For web publishers, Originality.ai will enable you to scan your content seamlessly, see who has checked it previously, and detect if an AI-powered tool was implored.

Industry Trends

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it important to check for plagiarism?

Tools for conducting a plagiarism check between two documents online are important as it helps to ensure the originality and authenticity of written work. Plagiarism undermines the value of professional and educational institutions, as well as the integrity of the authors who write articles. By checking for plagiarism, you can ensure the work that you produce is original or properly attributed to the original author. This helps prevent the distribution of copied and misrepresented information.

What is Text Comparison?

Text comparison is the process of taking two or more pieces of text and comparing them to see if there are any similarities, differences and/or plagiarism. The objective of a text comparison is to see if one of the texts has been copied or paraphrased from another text. This text compare tool for plagiarism check between two documents has been built to help you streamline that process by finding the discrepancies with ease.

How do Text Comparison Tools Work?

Text comparison tools work by analyzing and comparing the contents of two or more text documents to find similarities and differences between them. This is typically done by breaking the texts down into smaller units such as sentences or phrases, and then calculating a similarity score based on the number of identical or nearly identical units. The comparison may be based on the exact wording of the text, or it may take into account synonyms and other variations in language. The results of the comparison are usually presented in the form of a report or visual representation, highlighting the similarities and differences between the texts.

String comparison is a fundamental operation in text comparison tools that involves comparing two sequences of characters to determine if they are identical or not. This comparison can be done at the character level or at a higher level, such as the word or sentence level.

The most basic form of string comparison is the equality test, where the two strings are compared character by character and a Boolean result indicating whether they are equal or not is returned. More sophisticated string comparison algorithms use heuristics and statistical models to determine the similarity between two strings, even if they are not exactly the same. These algorithms often use techniques such as edit distance, which measures the minimum number of operations (such as insertions, deletions, and substitutions) required to transform one string into another.

Another common technique for string comparison is n-gram analysis, where the strings are divided into overlapping sequences of characters (n-grams) and the frequency of each n-gram is compared between the two strings. This allows for a more nuanced comparison that takes into account partial similarities, rather than just exact matches.

String comparison is a crucial component of text comparison tools, as it forms the basis for determining the similarities and differences between texts. The results of the string comparison can then be used to generate a report or visual representation of the similarities and differences between the texts.

What is Syntax Highlighting?

Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors and integrated development environments (IDEs) that helps to visually distinguish different elements of a code or markup language. It does this by coloring different elements of the code, such as keywords, variables, functions, and operators, based on a predefined set of rules.

The purpose of syntax highlighting is to make the code easier to read and understand, by drawing attention to the different elements and their structure. For example, keywords may be colored in a different hue to emphasize their importance, while comments or strings may be colored differently to distinguish them from the code itself. This helps to make the code more readable, reducing the cognitive load of the reader and making it easier to identify potential syntax errors.

How Can I Conduct a Plagiarism Check between Two Documents Online?

With our tool it’s easy, just enter or upload some text, click on the button “Compare text” and the tool will automatically display the diff between the two texts.

What Are the Benefits of Using a Text Compare Tool?

Using text comparison tools is much easier, more efficient, and more reliable than proofreading a piece of text by hand. Eliminate the risk of human error by using a tool to detect and display the text difference within seconds.

What Files Can You Inspect with This Text Compare Tool?

We have support for the file extensions .pdf, .docx, .odt, .doc and .txt. You can also enter your text or copy and paste text to compare.

Will My Data Be Shared?

There is never any data saved by the tool, when you hit “Upload” we are just scanning the text and pasting it into our text area so with our text compare tool, no data ever enters our servers.

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