Plagiarism is an act of dishonesty which extends beyond just copying someone else's work. It involves (knowingly or unknowingly) the presentation of work, ideas or words of someone (a person or organisation) without proper citation. Plagiarism gives the impression the content produced is authentic when it is not, threatening the integrity of the work produced and undermining the basic principles of honesty and ethics.1

Academia cannot continue to push the boundaries of research and discoveries, if its very integrity is compromised by copying work done by others. Moreover, presenting someone else's work in an inaccurate way can distort findings and create confusion, undermining the advancement of scientific progress. The same principles apply in higher education establishments; students need to learn the skills of not only conducting research but being able to articulate findings in a coherent and methodical manner.

Enter Turnitin, a global household company which facilitates academic integrity and is used by 98% of UK universities to evaluate similarity of assessments against online content and previously submitted work.2 With substantial changes on the horizon regarding access to new levels of computing technology with artificial intelligence (AI), there has become a need to develop screening protocols to detect AI-generated plagiarism. Recently, the company announced ChatGPT and AI writing detection capabilities with 98% confidence, citing two years' work on this prior to the release of ChatGPT.3,4

With advancements in AI and improved access to a wide range of AI applications, a new challenge has emerged for academics to be able to distinguish between genuine and AI generated work, the latter constituting dishonesty and plagiarism. Such screening protocols may also be considered for academic publishing in journals to prevent the gradual erosion of original, novel work with computer generated text.