Co-author uses ChatGPT for academic writing - is it ethical?

Question

I am writing a paper with a co-author. I spent a considerable amount of time (several months) writing a first draft of the paper. I then sent it to co-author asking them to revise the draft and add their contribution in specified sections.

The co-author returned the draft within a few days. The required parts were added and the writing was heavily edited. The style of the new document looked similarly to a few other documents that I knew were produced by ChatGPT. I asked the co-author and they admitted (quite proudly) that they used ChatGPT to assist with writing and editing of the manuscript.

I was not happy with the resulted state of the document. There were several obvious errors, which I pointed to the co-author. But also, the whole document seemed a bit weird to read. I could not really define it, but reading it gave away a feeling that the document was AI-generated. I was concerned with the possibility that there could be other mistakes in the document, which are not immediately obvious, and that it could reduce the chances for the paper to pass through the peer review process.

I shared my concerns with the co-author. They agreed to correct the mistakes I noticed. They claimed that they checked the document after it was generated, but a small number of issues possibly remained. They dismissed my argument that the writing is unnatural and weird to read, and requested to point out specific line-by-line errors, which should be corrected. They suggested that I could proofread the document and edit it again before submission, since I have concerns about its quality.

I feel that co-author did not put sufficient effort in their writing, and leans on ChatGPT, my work as a co-author, and work of peer reviewers instead. This leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, but I do not know if this behaviour is unethical or wrong in some other way which I can't quite describe.

Are my concerns valid and how is it best to communicate them to the co-author?

---

My first language is not English, and the same for my co-author. I appreciate that ChatGPT can correct errors in the use of English and improve grammar. I am concerned that it might introduce factual mistakes, change slight variations of meaning, or generally make the text unpleasant to read (although as a non-English speaker I find it difficult to explain why it happens).

Answer 1

You're right to be angry at this. It is unethical and many journals expressly forbid use of ChatGPT during the preparation of manuscripts (Science and all Springer journals).

I might be reading too much into this, but since you didn't tell them straight up that it is unethical, I assume that the co-author is a superior. You could identify a journal that forbids use of ChatGPT and highlight their policy to your colleague.

Answer 2

I'm not sure using ChatGPT to write papers is necessarily unethical (assuming proper citation). I wouldn't recommend it and many journals have explicitly banned it from the author list - though this is generally based on the argument that AI cannot fulfill all authorship criteria. I think it can become unethical if one tries to pass of AI-generated work as their own.

I think editing papers with ChatGPT is even more of a grey area. There are already plenty of editing companies that provide lower cost services that rely on AI. How is using a tool like ChatGPT to rework a paper you wrote any less ethical than paying for an editing service (whether that service uses humans or their own AI).

With that being said, your co-author doesn't actually sound like they are contributing to the writing. Instead they are shifting the work onto you. I don't think using ChatGPT in and of itself is the issue. The issue is that they are trying to take a shortcut and claim credit. Assuming they have contributed in other ways you could consider letting them know you expect more direct contribution to the writing. Or perhaps say that while ChatGPT is a powerful tool, their contribution to the manuscript must be their own. Finally you can always just express to them what you have said here, that you don't like the results of the AI edited/generated writing.

The nuclear option (which might be appropriate if they have not contributed otherwise) is to tell them editing with ChatGPT is not sufficient for authorship. And thus, if they wish to remain and author, they must make their own unique contributions.

Answer 3

I share your distaste for your coauthors use of ChatGPT, but I would not go as far as to say that any use of ChatGPT for academic writing is unethical. The following, however, is deeply disrespectful:

They dismissed my argument that the writing is unnatural and weird to read, and requested to point out specific line-by-line errors, which should be corrected. They suggested that I could proofread the document and edit it again before submission, since I have concerns about its quality.

Your coauthor has made far-reaching changes to your draft, changing the tone and flow of the text, and introducing enough obvious errors to raise serious concerns on your side. It seems that your coauthor has not pointed out any specific line-by-line errors to you, and they have not proofread the document themselves. To follow through on the parallel with your coauthors own words above; they seem to have no concerns about quality.

This attitude is deeply disrespectful. It shows that your coauthor has little regard for your work and does not value your time and efforts at all. A respectful yet effective way to point this out is to simply return their request to them. A message along the following lines should do, perhaps with some fluff depending on culture:

Thanks coauthor for going over my draft, and for addressing my concerns about the quality of your version of the draft. I've proofread it and edited it again, see the attachement. If you find any more errors or room for improvement, please point this out specifically line-by-line.

Of course you attach your original draft.

Answer 4

Many journals now allow the use of ChatGPT as a writing tool, similarly to grammar checkers or paid services, provided you leave a notice in the manuscript. Many journals have got text snippets on their website.

It depends on the journal. Many require a disclaimer similar to:

ChatGPT has been used in the writing for the purpose of [....]. The authors take full responsibility of the output.

With regards to your co-author, the main problems are:

• Lack of proofreading
• despite ChatGPT being very error prone at this point
• no concern that ChatGPT's writing style is grammatically correct but very unnatural and sterile
• altogether, lack of effort in the project

Your co-author is too lazy to put in his own time into the project and too dumb to use ChatGPT appropriately, thus having a negative impact on the project. Don't work with him or her.

Life advice: who misbehaves once will also misbehave again, and you should axe them as soon as you can.

Answer 5

The title ("ethical") and the question are slightly divergent.

Personally, I think the issue is not so much ethics as long as the source (ChatGPT) is mentioned. However, given that the latter, in turn, does not cite its sources, clearly the acceptable ethics around use of the bot is still evolving.

"I could not really define it" - that, in my opinion, is the real crux of the problem. ChatGPT generates a strangely synthetic text, a bit too smooth to be true, while possibly introducing hard-to-find errors.

Now, I, for myself, very much do not like having my text substantially altered without good reason, because while writing it, I form a model of what I want to say and, if it's well structured, when revising for errors, I need only to fix the minor errors that remain to adjust. A complete rewrite forces me to re-read the text as if it is new, as if it comes from a third party, in other words, it is possibly even more work than writing it myself. Of course, when you collaborate, that's what you have to do, but if it is text that you wrote yourself and when it is your duty to write that section, that's a real nuisance.

I usually also will not rewrite other people's sections. I will comment and make suggestions, but try not to reformulate complete sections (maybe I would individual sentences - but not the full structure of thinking).

Perhaps the best analogy is code. It is easier to understand one's own code and understand why it works (or it may fail) than to try to understand someone else's. Sure, someone else may spot subtle bugs etc., but the overall structure - in general - is best understood by the author and best not changed without consulting the latter.

In short, your gut feeling is perfectly justified. The co-author took a text where you spent time and effort making it understandable and mangled it through an intransparent process. Now, they dump on you the effort to make sure that this mangled result is correct, while ripping out all mental support scaffold that you built while writing. This is not on. It is like auto-reorganizing your desktop without asking you and without good reason.

This is unethical, simply, because it is creating unnecessary work for you. It's just not a good collegiate behaviour and shirking off their duty to quality, accuracy, reliability and correctness of results.

How to communicate: tell your colleague that you spent a lot of time getting your contribution of the paper right, and do not have the capacity redoing the work effectively from scratch, by trying to sort out all mistakes that the bot introduced unnecessarily. If they decide to write their part via bot, you need to read it as if it comes from a third party and check meticulously for errors. That they expect a line-by-line pointing out of errors is a sign that they do not take your time seriously or they do not understand how the bot works. You need to decide if you push back to remove the errors or, after the second "review" round, say, "now you fix this". I have done that with code development - after having been told for the 4th or 5th time that my library contained the bug in a software we developed, and it wasn't, I told the colleague, "no, the bug is in yours, please fix it".

This is not really ok, and you can warn them that you have to declare the ChatGPT contribution (you may be found out anyway, there are checkers for this now, so hiding that fact is not an option, in case they should contemplate it) which may affect the paper's acceptance.

If they dismiss your issues, you need to consider the option of splitting the paper if that is at all possible.

Answer 6

There are already several good answers regarding whether your concerns about your co-author's behavior are valid (they are), so I will focus on the second part of the question:

[...] how is it best to communicate them to the co-author?

Your co-author used ChatGPT without telling you, later admitted to using it after you asked them about it, and yet seems to still be under the impression that lightly edited AI-generated documents are indistinguishable from quality writing by a human. They are not: the fact that you took sufficient issue with the writing that it prompted a discussion about your collaborator's use of AI tools is strong evidence of the contrary, and something I would emphasize. If you found the writing bad, other readers are likely to find the writing bad. If your collaborator cannot see the difference, that's a failure on their part, and a sign they should definitely not use ChatGPT in the way they do, because they currently do not have the skills to transform the output of ChatGPT to the point it would be considered good academic writing.

Your co-author might then say that of course, ChatGPT's output needs some additional polishing to meet the quality standards of good published research and properly reflect the ideas of the human authors, and it is merely a tool to get a quick draft and/or some ideas. There, I would make the following points:

• Some people might get to a good document faster by editing a first draft generated by ChatGPT, some people might find it slow and painful work to modify the output of a Large Language Model to the point that it's no longer the AI's writing. Even if one thinks ChatGPT is a great help in their writing, one cannot expect that it's the case for other people, and should ponder whether that's how their co-authors work best and whether they're wasting their co-authors' time.
• Hiding how a document was generated is bad behavior in a collaboration. In the same way that one might not spend as much time checking grammar if one's co-author is a native English speaker, one does not proofread an AI-generated document in the same manner as one written by a human. In other situations, for example more time-constrained ones, you could have just blindly trusted that your collaborator did a good job, and ended up sending a bad manuscript to an editor. Your document might also get flagged for plagiarism because ChatGPT gave similar looking text to several of its users, or copied stuff almost verbatim from the internet.

Do: ask ChatGPT to find grammar mistakes in a text, or to suggest synonyms and alternative ways to convey some ideas, and use its output to improve your writing. Don't: ask it to produce several pages of output at once, edit 10% of it, and send that to your collaborator without disclosing that's how the document was produced.

Answer 7

Since it feels like an AI-generated text and contains obvious errors, it suggests to me that the co-authors just copy pasted the ChatGPT output, which seems like a terrible practice. From what you wrote, it seems that they might have even copied pasted the whole document. That honestly seems unethical to me, as it suggests that they would have tried to publish something that they are aware might not be true or might have been plagiarized. So I would say that your concerns are definitely valid. So if I were you, I would definitely not cooperate with them ever again. As to how to communicate it... The only thing that I can think of, that might end in a positive outcome, is to find a native English speaking person, who can identify the obviously AI-generated parts, and who can verbalize, why they feel off. Otherwise I am afraid you will have to either bite the bullet in some way, or to be very blunt with the co-authors and force them to put the effort in.

That being said, I find the opposition to ANY use of ChatGPT for academic writing in the answers/comments bizarre. People seem to act as if you have to put what ChatGPT generates exactly the way it is generated, even if it is wrong or feels wrong.

Answer 8

Using GPT to write papers is completely unacceptable. This doesn't mean using it at all is bad- I use GPT literally every day for things like Python questions, debugging, or translating code to do a certain thing.

However, every single word in my papers is written by me or by coworkers. So, you're totally correct to be upset with them, that's NOT how this works. Every word on the page needs to be your own, not GPT's.

Edit: because passing another entity's words as your own is plagiarism.

Answer 9

I would argue that using ChatGPT is unethical (plagiarism) or inaccurate (often just lies). I think if ChatGPT is used it definitely has to be cited.

Answer 10

In my opinion usage of GPT is scientific misconduct. The core of science is citing the source of information correctly, so that it can be tracked back and put into context - and errors can be found.

As of now, if you let GPT make statements on your behalf there is not way for you to figure out (and thus you can not cite it correctly) if a certain statement/fact is actually derived specifically from a reference (even if you ask gpt to give these) or if that is actually only a reflection of what chat gpt typically would find referenced to statements relating that topic. So that means that in the core you make it completely impossible to trace back "your" logic and reasoning to it's original sources.

As a side effect there is no way for your coauthor to tell (without reading the citations) if that referenced paper actually says what is implicitly or explicitly stated or if gpt just found it typical to mention that one.

My recommendation: revert you paper to the state which you gave your coauthor, go to the supervisor/principal investigator or person representing the project and ask them about rewriting the paper without relying on contributions from said coauthor. If the coauthor is part of an institution, address the issue to the appropriate office there.

Answer 11

I don't see any ethical issues in using ChatGPT or some other automated systems to help write a paper. Just make sure that the publication target allows it eg see https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/193049/452 and if you generate large chunks you may also want to check for plagiarism.

If you are unhappy about your coauthor's work quality, that's a different issue.