There’s a continual debate about whether the use of AI tools is ethical. However, there is no question that certain tools have earned the green light for being ethical and helpful, such as AI detectors that help determine if content has been AI-generated.
Other tools, such as AI essay writers, are not so straightforward in their “ethicality rating.” They may be extremely convenient and helpful, but they are often used improperly.
Read on for a deeper look into AI essay writers to help you decide if using one would be ethical for you.
What Are AI Essay Writers?
AI essay writers are artificial intelligence tools that have been trained to write essays on command. You can give the essay writer the rubric requirements or specific essay parameters, and it will generate a well-written essay almost instantly.
When Would Someone Use an AI Essay Writer?
A student might use an AI essay writer when they don’t want to spend several hours researching and formatting their own essay. When a seasoned writer feels stumped with writer’s block, they might turn to an essay writer to get out of the slump. When someone wants to use AI to formulate their essay but doesn’t want it to get flagged as AI content, they might use an essay writer that promises to bypass AI detection.
Essay writers can also be useful to those in the professional realm. The AI production of text lends itself to blog posts, website copy, emails, newsletters, social media posts, and more.
Of course, the structure of professional writing as listed often differs from academia, so professionals will want to keep that in mind if the essay composer they’re using spits out structured essay content.
Pros of AI Essay Writers
As you decide if using an AI essay writer is ethically right for you, a few pros are worth mentioning. This AI tool can certainly add value to the writing process, as you’ll see with these listed advantages.
Saves Time
There’s no doubt that AI essay writers save time. A research essay that can take hours or even days to write can be completed almost instantly by AI. This aspect alone makes AI essay writers highly appealing, especially to students who aren’t looking forward to completing a lengthy research paper.
Grammar Should Be Correct
AI grammar checkers are popular tools that many writers use on a daily basis. AI essay writers tend to have a grammar checker built in, so you’ll know that whatever the generator produces should be grammatically correct. Again, this saves you time, especially in the editing process.
Generates Ideas
An AI essay writer can help you overcome writer’s block, since it generates ideas for you. Some people aren’t looking to turn in an essay completely composed by AI, but they need ideas to get their brain working and ideas flowing. An AI essay writer breaks down topics into an essay format, giving a writer a good idea of how to formulate and make their paper flow.
Citations and Formatting Done for You
One of the most tedious parts of an essay is ensuring you’ve properly cited your sources. This includes both sources within the essay and in the works cited or references page. Having the AI essay writer do this work for you not only saves you time but also helps ensure you aren’t plagiarizing.
In addition to doing citations, the essay writer will properly format your paper. If you’ve ever spent hours looking up all the rules of formatting a paper in APA style, you’ll understand what a huge advantage this is in academia!
Cons of AI Essay Writers
As with most things, you can also find the downsides to AI essay writers. Some of these cons are a pretty big deal and should be factors to consider as you decide whether using an AI essay writer is right for you.
Lacking Originality
What you have to say is valuable. If an AI essay writer does the work, your voice, style, and ideas won’t be original to you. The human touch and emotion will be lacking. You may save time, but the real you is left out of the process.
If you don’t do the research yourself, you’re not taking the time to understand what the sources are saying and letting that information impact your view on the topic. Without that personal impact, you fail to add a new perspective and fail to grow in knowledge and understanding.
Shortchanges Students in the Learning Process
In addition to having value in what you say, there’s value in the learning process. Learning how to research and present those ideas helps you grow academically. Letting an AI essay writer do all the work for you takes learning out of the process. There’s value in learning how to comb through materials and pick out the most valuable pieces to support your ideas.
Possibly Unethical
If you have an AI essay writer do all the work for you and try to pass off that work as your own, it may challenge your integrity. It can lead to issues about academic honesty if you’re a student, and may even cause you to get a failing grade if you submit an AI-written paper.
Some educators are cracking down on the use of AI on assignments because it can be a gray area ethically, and they feel it shortchanges their students’ learning.
The same goes for the use of AI-written content in the professional world. If you’ve been asked to produce original content, it won’t do to submit a blog post written with a language learning model. Plus, AI detectors will likely spot your lack of effort and cause problems for you at work.
AI Platforms With Essay Writers
The platforms below offer an AI essay writer or similar tool. Not all essay writers are equal, so be sure to read through all the descriptions to determine the one that is right for you.
Undetectable AI
Undetectable AI is an AI detector platform that offers many other AI tools, including an AI essay writer and an AI essay rewriter. When you use the essay writer, you tell the platform the word count you need, the topic, and the essay style, such as argumentative or descriptive.
Almost instantly, the essay writer will create an essay draft based on the parameters you put in. You can then edit the AI content to ensure it says what you need it to say.
The AI platform has access to a large database, and they claim the essays will be well-researched. You should also be able to avoid plagiarism of any of the sources used because the essay writer will ensure they’re cited properly.
The Good AI
The Good AI platform offers an essay writer and an essay outliner. If you want to use the essay writer function, start by typing in your desired topic. The more information you can share, the better results you’ll get. Next, choose your word count, and then select the type of essay you require—categories include persuasive, argumentative, and memoir.
You can pick the writing style you prefer or upload your own example of the style you’d like. If you need references, you can pick the reference style format, such as APA or MLA. A list of references will pop up, and you can choose which ones you’d like included in the essay. Finally, click “generate,” and two drafts will be available in less than a minute for you to choose from.
Jasper
Jasper is geared toward marketers. It has a tool that functions similarly to an essay writer. This platform is trained to help write things like blog posts, Instagram captions, and product descriptions. The blog post feature may function similarly to an essay writer, but the goal is to get more specific and create a tone for the post that enhances search rankings and SEO efforts.
Writesonic
Writesonic calls their writing feature an AI article writer. It is perhaps most beneficial for those in the SEO blog market who need to crank out articles to help grow their visibility and improve their search ranking score. The platform is trained to fact-check and cite sources and does in-depth research on the web.
Is Using an AI Essay Writer Ethical?
If you use an AI essay writer to create an essay and don’t do anything to edit it and make it your own, that is probably unethical. If, however, you use an AI essay writer as an idea generator to help you formulate a paper, but also do a large chunk of the work yourself, it is more likely to be ethical, and can be a valuable supporting tool in your writing process.
So, long answer short, it may be ethical to use an AI essay writer, but it depends on how you choose to use it.
Ethical Alternatives
If you’d like to use AI tools to help you improve your writing, but want to keep your distance from that uneasy gray area, there are some other ethical alternatives that are worth looking into.
AI Detectors
AI detectors are becoming standard tools for educators, editors, and publishers to determine if AI tools were used to write content. A high-quality platform will have a high accuracy rating, meaning you’re less likely to have content that isn’t AI-generated flagged as being AI-generated.
AI Detector is one example of a high-quality platform that is sure to meet academic and professional needs. It can instantly detect AI content and take it a step further in helping you humanize that content with its text humanizer.
Humanizers
A humanizer can rewrite AI content to sound more like a human wrote it. AI content tends to be repetitive, a bit stiff, and sometimes too formal. A humanizer can smooth out the rough edges and make the content sound more authentic and relatable. A quality humanizer will do this while still maintaining the intended message of the content.
If you’ve used another AI tool to generate ideas for content, the humanizer will be a beneficial tool. Occasionally, AI detectors flag content as being AI-generated when you have actually written it all yourself. A humanizer can help you see how to change and improve your content so it isn’t falsely flagged as being created by AI.
Plagiarism Checkers
No matter what kind of writing you do or what kind of writer you are, you should avoid plagiarism. There can be heavy consequences for those who plagiarize.
Sometimes we unintentionally plagiarize because our brain is fried after working long hours on an essay, article, or book. A plagiarism checker is a handy tool that comes to the rescue to ensure we don’t miss citing any sources in the final, burnt-out, phase of the writing process.
Plagiarism checkers like Turnitin have been around for decades and have commonly been used by high school and college educators to ensure students maintain academic honesty. Any writer can utilize this resource to ensure they haven’t stolen anyone’s work.
Grammar Checkers
Grammarly is perhaps the best-known grammar checker, but there are many other similar tools. Even the best writers miss a comma here or there, or make a poor choice in sentence structure. Grammar checkers are helpful in catching those little mistakes we all make in our writing process.
Something to be aware of, though, is that some grammar checker edits can be flagged in AI detectors as being AI-generated. So it’s a good idea to be wise about which edits you accept. Use any suggestions outside of basic grammar and spelling corrections sparingly in order not to be accused of using AI in your work.
Chatbots
AI chatbots, such as Gemini and ChatGPT, can be useful tools to generate ideas for an essay. You might be able to get them to write an essay for you, but it may not be of the best quality. Getting basic ideas for topics or the basic structure of an essay can get your own ideas flowing without letting AI do all the work for you. Some may also consider chatbots an ethical gray area, but when used in the brainstorming process, rather than in the actual writing, it can be a useful tool.
Should I Use an AI Essay Writer?
As we’ve seen, AI essay writers are considered a bit of a gray area ethically. Ultimately, it is up to you to decide if this tool will be beneficial.
If you’re a student, the risk of being called out for academic dishonesty may be too high a price to pay for the time an AI essay writer will save you. You’ll also miss out on valuable learning and development if you don’t put in research effort on your own.
If you have a website and are trying to boost search ranking and traffic to that website, an AI essay writer or article writer may be a helpful tool. If you decide to use one, you’ll need to ensure the content isn’t detected as AI or as too AI-sounding. Otherwise, search engines may penalize your rankings.
If you’re interested in using AI resources to help improve your writing, there are many ethical alternatives to choose from. They avoid the gray area of AI essay writers and provide peace of mind that you’re presenting authentic and honest work. Platforms like AI Detector are worth looking into to help you better understand how these tools can add value to your writing process.
