The article “A literary prize for an artificial writer” published in The duty tells us that a journalism professor, Shen Yang, won a prize for a short story he submitted to the science fiction literary competition in Jiangsu, China. However, the author admits to having placed a series of commands with artificial intelligence (AI) so that it generated a first draft, which he subsequently pruned and refined to result in a final version seven times shorter. This event, like many others, urges us to think about the moral issues raised by new technologies. In this case, it is the evaluation of intellectual, literary and artistic creations that is concerned.
Let us first look at Shen Yang’s intellectual integrity. If we take into account the event as a whole (he had previously informed the president of the organizing committee, also a member of the jury, of his maneuver, who had also encouraged him to test it; he quickly demonstrated transparency by publicly exposing its editorial process), it would be an exaggeration to morally condemn Shen Yang. After all, he did not cheat, since the rules of the competition did not prohibit what he did. We cheat when we surreptitiously break a rule.
Besides, why should the act of cheating be discouraged and punished? Answer: because by hiding the violation of a rule, we are lying in addition to not respecting a principle of equal opportunities by giving ourselves an advantage when we take part in a game or an evaluation. Consequently, a professor, an institution or the organizing committee of a competition is, morally speaking, entitled to sanction an individual who has cheated.
Also, in the current context of the emergence of AI, the real philosophical interest of the prize received by Shen Yang appears when we question the absence of rules relating to the use of AI in the process. of creating content presented here as literary. Then arises the question of the being at the origin of a work. Who (or what) wrote the essence of a text, its main idea, its articulations and its main characteristics? Examining the notion of plagiarism will help explore this point.
Plagiarizing consists of appropriating in part or in whole the fruit of the intellectual or artistic work of another person, that is to say, making people believe that what one gives to read, hear or see is its own creation, although it is not. This is manifested concretely by the absence of a clear and precise indication of the source. Failing to mention the latter therefore represents theft of intellectual property coupled with a lie, two morally reprehensible actions.
Does this mean, then, that Shen Yang, if he had presented himself to the end as the author of his short story, would have been guilty of plagiarism? Based on the previous definition, no, because his action would not have satisfied one of the essential conditions of plagiarism, namely attributing someone else’s ideas or work. AI is not a person. However, he would have somehow lied by omission and at the same time would have been recognized for something that does not belong to him (talent, work accomplished, time invested, originality, etc.).
So, although the rules of a competition or assessment do not prohibit the use of AI to produce content (and not as a simple linguistic correction tool), everyone should indicate whether they acts, partially or totally, from his work. Giving credit to someone who doesn’t deserve it is counterintuitive. The same is true in academia, where assessments are used to assess the skills, abilities and knowledge acquired by a person, and not the performance of a chatbot.
Which amounts to saying, ultimately, that it is, from a moral point of view, entirely legitimate to explicitly prohibit the use of AI in the production of an artistic work (photography, drawing, etc. .) or a piece of writing (dissertation, memoir, short story, essay, etc.) which both aims to satisfy established criteria and is intended to be personal.
If it is necessary to be interested in the regulation of the use of AI in the process of literary creation, the story of Shen Yang’s award-winning short story shows that it is just as necessary to think about the very nature of literature. There would indeed be no sense in awarding a literary prize to writing that is not.
Is literature generated by AI really literature? Using Louis Hamelin’s definition, can we consider that a computer program can express “creative and critical thinking” in writing? Or, to speak like Jacques Godbout, must an authentically literary writing be born from a writer, therefore from a human “projecting himself entirely into his work, with an original vision and a language of his own”? Let people of letters (not machines!) write about this.