What Is a Person? Emerging Interpretations of AI Authorship and Attribution

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recently, the scholarly community has been eagerly exploring how AI‐produced content should be integrated into both academic writing and scholarly publishing. This paper investigates the prevailing responses to the introduction of ChatGPT in November 2022 and the interest that has been afforded it by both the academy and the publishing industry. A review of the published literature on aspects of ChatGPT authorship was carried out, finding that government and the publishing industry have unequivocally asserted that large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT do not possess the traits of a person and are not able to author texts as a result. Other approaches, including practice, have been less vehement. To assess the integration of instructions on referencing ChatGPT using APA, top Google hits in the .edu domain were collected and analyzed over a 6‐week period from March 14 to April 18, 2023, a time during which official recommendations of the APA Style were finalized. Findings reveal that librarians were quick to provide guidance, but slow to update that guidance, contributing to the potential for misunderstanding the affordances of and best practices for work with LLMs.