Is Using ChatGPT Cheating?

Finding the line between “a little help” and unethical pretense

I drew a blank. The scene I was writing this week demanded a vivid analogy. A metaphor. A simile. Anything but a simple adjective. And I could think of nothing. So, I wondered if an artificial intelligence content generator could crack open my writer’s block. I typed this prompt into ChatGPT:

Complete this descriptive sentence: Feeling hopeful for the first time in years, I turned to him like …

In exactly one second, I received this response: Feeling hopeful for the first time in years, I turned to him like a lost sailor spotting a lighthouse on a stormy night.

Perfect! I wish I had thought of that myself.

Now, comes the writer’s moral dilemma. Is it cheating to use this AI-generated sentence in my novel?

As I started typing the simile into my doc, I felt a twinge of guilt, as if I had looked up the answers to today’s crossword puzzle and couldn’t unsee the words and pretend that I had completed the puzzle all by myself. Would I admit to my writer’s group that I did not create that image? Would I publish a sentence that did not come from my own creative juices?

While I worried over this ethical dilemma, I reflected back on my earlier writing – back before ChatGPT. My blogs postings have, most often, been reflections about my writing career in an era long gone. So, reflecting on my writing before AI, I wondered if I had ever published writing that was not entirely my own. The answer surprised me.

You bet I did! Every time I took a suggestion from someone in my writer’s group that improved my sentence, or my descriptive attempt, or my dialogue, I added words to my story that were not my own. In fact, every time I accepted suggested changes from spellcheck or Grammarly, or right-clicked for a synonym, I was using AI to bring my writing to a higher level.  

But where is the line between “a little help” and unethical pretense?

In response to a flood of AI-created novels, Amazon recently added a disclaimer requirement to its KDP self-publishing program. When self-publishing on Amazon, authors are now asked to declare whether or not the work was produced with the assistance of an AI content generator. So, now I wonder if I must move my novel into the AI-created category because I love the sailor/lighthouse analogy and will insert it into my story.

What do you think?

This is the kind of question that our community of writers needs to discuss and answer.