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In February 2023, a little more than a year after the launch of ChatGPT, Vanderbilt University sent an email to its student body in the wake of a fatal campus shooting at Michigan State.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe recent Michigan shootings are a tragic reminder of the importance of taking care of each other,\u201d the email read in part. In tiny type at the bottom of the message, a disclaimer appeared: \u201cparaphrased from OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT.\u201d<\/p>\n
Students immediately objected.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a sick and twisted irony to making a computer write your message about community and togetherness because you can\u2019t be bothered to reflect on it yourself,\u201d one senior wrote.<\/p>\n
A Vanderbilt apology email quickly followed. The university launched a professionalism and ethics investigation. One associate dean couched the misstep as a result of learning pains tied to the adoption of new technology.<\/p>\n
Chatbots have spawned a host of ethical questions about writing assistance for teachers, students and authors.<\/p>\n
But similar debates about ghostwriting have been taking place for over a century, revealing a persistent discomfort with the idea that the words we read might not belong to the person whose name is attached to them.<\/p>\n
Outsourcing authorship<\/p>\n
Ghostwriting, a paid arrangement in which one person writes under another\u2019s name, has existed for over a century.<\/p>\n
The term seems to have first appeared in the English language in a 1908 newspaper article, which I encountered while researching my forthcoming book, \u201cGhostwriting: A Secret History, from God to A.I.\u201d The story appeared in the Daily Star, in Lincoln, Nebraska, and describes an anonymous writer who earned $5,000 to help a high-society woman write a book.<\/p>\n
Today, ghostwriting usually involves collaborations between professional writers and celebrities or professionals who otherwise wouldn\u2019t have the time, skill or connections to write a book.<\/p>\n
On publication of the manuscript, the ghostwriter is typically named, albeit obliquely \u2013 perhaps identified as a friend or consultant in the acknowledgments section. In some instances, the ghostwriter\u2019s name appears alongside the credited author\u2019s on the cover. Either way, the client assumes ownership of the ghostwriter\u2019s work.<\/p>\n
An ethical gray area<\/p>\n
And yet when I type \u201cthe practice of one person writing in another person\u2019s name\u201d into Google, the search engine doesn\u2019t spit out \u201cghostwriting.\u201d<\/p>\n
My first hit is \u201cpseudonym\u201d or \u201calias.\u201d \u201cPlagiarism,\u201d \u201clibel\u201d and \u201cslander\u201d aren\u2019t far behind. A 1953 article titled \u201cGhost Writing and History\u201d that appeared in The American Scholar also points out that in the mid-20th century, \u201cforgery\u201d \u2013 falsely imitating another\u2019s work with the intent to deceive \u2013 and \u201cghostwriting\u201d could be used interchangeably by scholars.<\/p>\n
In other words, even when consensual and compensated, ghostwriting has some relatives that are ethically suspect. And maybe that\u2019s why many clients obscure the fact that they\u2019ve used a ghostwriter, and why responses to ghostwritten works often reflect uneasiness with the practice.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou should be ashamed,\u201d read one social media post, written in response to Millie Bobby Brown\u2019s 2023 debut novel, which she co-wrote with a ghostwriter. \u201c[The ghostwriter\u2019s] name should be on the cover. She was the one who actually wrote the book.\u201d<\/p>\n
The discomfort goes both ways: \u201cI feel so guilty and ashamed whenever I use a ghostwriter now because I feel people will think I\u2019m lying,\u201d an anonymous poster on Reddit admitted.<\/p>\n
Both the criticism and self-flagellation imply that the act of claiming another person\u2019s words can render these words deceitful, even if the words have been paid for and the content is true.<\/p>\n
Ghostwriting agencies rush to defuse these worries. Ghostwriting has been around forever, the Association of Ghostwriters reassures its clients. Ghostwriting is consensual and collaborative \u2013 not lazy, deceptive or a form of \u201cselling out,\u201d an author who\u2019d recently used ghostwriting services explained.<\/p>\n
And yet, in the last chapter of her ghostwritten book, Whoopi Goldberg acknowledges some misgivings about using a ghostwriter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI meant to try (to write the book myself),\u201d Goldberg writes. \u201cAnd when it turned out I couldn\u2019t quite pull it off \u2026 I looked for help.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goldberg frames the assistance of ghostwriting as something she deserved after overcoming obstacles as a Black woman. But Goldberg also has financial resources available that others looking for writing assistance usually don\u2019t. High-end ghostwriters collect in the mid-six figures for their services; Prince Harry\u2019s ghostwriter, J.R. Moehringer, supposedly scored a $1 million advance.<\/p>\n
Cue chatbots. Generative AI promises to be the ghostwriter for the masses, so much so that ghostwriter Josh Lisec explained to me how, in the future, ghostwriting will need to be marketed as a boutique service for elites if it is to survive.<\/p>\n
Naming names<\/p>\n
Whether you\u2019re paying for a ghostwriter or using a free chatbot, \u201cassistance\u201d or \u201ccollaboration\u201d on intellectual and artistic work is not automatically unethical.<\/p>\n
Editors have long made a career out of helping authors shape their writing. Visual artists have long employed studio assistants. Television shows only get written collaboratively in writers\u2019 rooms.<\/p>\n
And yet, accepting assistance on intellectual or artistic work can raise legitimate questions, particularly with regards to how that assistance is acknowledged and how much assistance can be accepted while still calling a project \u201cours.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the late 19th century, for example, one sculptor went to court to rebut a claim that his assistant \u2013 whom the press referred to as a \u201cghost\u201d \u2013 had completed sculptures for which the sculptor took credit. The judge announced that an artist could accept, with integrity, a certain amount of mechanical assistance. But he added that there was a threshold when artistic assistance became \u201cdishonest.\u201d The judge made the accused sculptor craft a bust in real time to prove his skill.<\/p>\n
French sculptor Auguste Rodin observes his assistants as they make plaster casts of his works. Corbis\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Similarly, most educators find it more ethical when their students turn to ChatGPT for editing assistance but much less so when they use it to generate a document from scratch.<\/p>\n
Many universities now allow AI as a tool but require users to verify its accuracy and disclose its use.<\/p>\n
Yet even verified, A.I.-generated text, if claimed solely as an individual\u2019s work, can pose policy violations at my institution, the University of Southern California: \u201cYou should never attempt to present \u2026 content created by others, including generative AI, as your own.\u201d<\/p>\n
The same policies that govern appropriate A.I. use also come up in ghostwriting contracts. The ghostwriter signs a \u201cwarranty of originality\u201d that promises the author that the ghostwriter has \u2013 via platforms such as iThenticate \u2013 fact-checked and plagiarism-checked their work.<\/p>\n
When inaccuracies do crop up, ghostwriters often take the fall.<\/p>\n
Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blamed her ghostwriter for indicating in her memoir that she had met North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Physician David Agus, who teaches at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, held his ghostwriter responsible for the many instances of plagiarism that were identified in his popular science books.<\/p>\n
Ghostwriters willingly provide assistance and accept responsibility for the originality of what they write. Scholars have permission to use generative AI, provided they properly cite its use.<\/p>\n
And yet when Vanderbilt administrators advertised that their email had been written with the assistance of ChatGPT, students and faculty pushed back.<\/p>\n
University policies and book contracts may offer veils of legitimacy and shields from legal liability. But in the end, readers still seem to want the words they\u2019re reading to come from the mind of the person whose name is on the byline.<\/p>\n
Emily Hodgson Anderson, Professor of English and Dean of Undergraduate Education, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences<\/p>\n
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
#told #slop #debate #years #ghostwriting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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