ChatGPT is a free artificial intelligence-based website that will literally write your essay for you. Simply go to the ChatGPT website, type in your prompt and you’re done! You have now completed your English essay in seconds, using 0% of your own brain power, yet a perfectly structured, unique essay has been created just for you thanks to the AI engine. Great, right? 

Unfortunately, this is not the case. Using engines like ChatGPT to write an essay defeats the purpose of the assignment, as it is assigned for the student to display the skills they have learned through their own writing. Using an AI, or artificial intelligence, engine is lazy, selfish and dishonorable.

“Personally, when I see people that have used ChatGPT, their writing seems ingenuine,” said LBHS senior Alea Dillow. “People are cheating themselves out of learning. As an incoming English major, I feel like our individuality should be expressed through our own words.”

Luckily, there are more and more counters to ChatGPT created every day. A few months ago, anyone had the ability to “create” an essay through ChatGPT and turn it in through a plagiarism checker such as Turnitin.com with no flags, being 0% plagiarized. Now, if you turn an essay created by ChatGPT into Turnitin.com, the essay would come back as plagiarized, and a popup would appear saying, “This essay was created using artificial intelligence.” 

As a matter of fact, a Princeton University engineering student named Edward Tian has successfully developed an app that can successfully determine whether or not an essay has been written using ChatGPT. To do this, GPTZero reads through the essay, looking for sudden bursts of creativity that are unlike human writing. When this characteristic is noticed, GPTZero makes note of it and will determine if it was written using AI. His app, GPTZero, was inspired by the buzz around the Princeton campus during the Fall semester, and he decided to create his app to stop it. 

“I just thought it’s incredible, but at the same time, it’s a technology that’s like opening Pandora’s box, and we can never put it back,” said Tian. “We needed to build the safeguards to adopt it responsibly.”

Tian is absolutely right. The technology is, without a doubt, amazing, but we must have control over it. If we aren’t able to take control of it, who knows how far it can go. 

“While ChatGPT will present challenges, especially for teachers, it is a technology to which we must adapt and embrace,” said LBHS math teacher Lara Greco. “I am certain we will see a variety of positive changes as a result of ChatGPT and learn ways to use it to our advantage. However, as with all technology, it will have negative impacts as well. For this reason, we must get ahead of the curve and learn as much as we can about this technology.”