A Rapid Investigation of Artificial Intelligence Generated Content Footprints in Scholarly Publications
Gengyan Tang, Sarah Elaine Eaton
Abstract
This study reports on a novel phenomenon observed in scholarly publications. Some research articles unrelated to the field of artificial intelligence (AI)–generated content (AIGC) contain phrases such as ‘As an AI language model …’ The authors conceptualize this phenomenon as ‘AIGC footprints.’ To provide early evidence, they conducted a small-scale sample investigation by collecting twenty-five articles. These articles were published by authors from countries in Central Asia, South Asia, and Africa. Among these authors, there were assistant professors, doctoral and master’s students. Single authors and single affiliations were more common. Analysis of the article content revealed that some authors utilized ChatGPT for literature reviews or idea generation. The twenty-five articles with AIGC footprints were published in eighteen different academic journals. The emergence of AIGC footprints reflects the potential challenges faced by scholarly publishing and higher education. The authors also provide several recommendations.