Lately, it seems impossible to avoid anything regarding artificial intelligence. It’s even award-winning; its advancements received recognition in 2023. AI capabilities have officially reached the point where the CHAT, Pembroke Pines Charter High School’s (PPCHS) student-led newspaper, was plagiarized using AI.
As of recently, the CHAT experienced an unprecedented surge in views, bringing surprise and excitement to the student journalists. Junior Gianna Medina, a member of the CHAT’s photo staff, wrote the most viewed story, a column about her journey as a ballerina.
“I think that it is really cool that my story has so many views and that the CHAT is getting this recognition,” says Medina.
As of Nov. 21, Medina’s story has garnered 212,718 views, drawing concern towards the website. What caused it? Does the CHAT use bots? How did views boost so quickly and so much?
A total of 311,000 events, or interactions, occurred regarding Medina’s feature story. About 285,000 were searches that directly led to the CHAT website, while the rest were organic searches. These events originate mostly from Bangladesh, along with countries like Pakistan, the United States, the Philippines, and Nepal.
This kind of recognition led to a plagiarized video being uploaded onto YouTube. The video cycles through numerous AI-generated photos of ballerinas, as well as an AI voice-over that recites Medina’s story word-for-word.
“Even though it is a type of recognition, I hate it,” emphasizes Evan Omana, the CHAT’s digital editor-in-chief. “It is plagiarism, so I don’t think it is something to be happy about,” the senior continued.
The CHAT Newspaper staff have mixed perspectives on this, but they all share a similar opinion that the attention, regardless of its nature, has contributed to the CHAT’s growth.
Marlee Jaworski, a senior and co-managing editor of the CHAT, highlights, “I do think that it is sort of cool that we are getting this recognition, but I think it is also dangerous because of the copyright issues involved, and for our website to get the wrong reputation.”
The CHAT’s other co-managing editor, senior Eri Fatimilehin, says, “A lot of the views that Gianna got were from a lot of people around the world, so being able to see all of these comments was really exciting and cool. I’m excited to see what the CHAT has in store for the future, and hopefully it doesn’t have anything to do with AI.”
Kelly Foreman, the digital department’s adviser, has thoughts on the situation as well. “Of course, the recognition is nice for the newspaper, but there is still plagiarism involved. I think that this whole situation is both good and bad.” He emphasizes how plagiarism can affect the CHAT’s reputation and is actively looking for solutions to preserve the newspaper’s growth as well as its integrity.
However, Medina’s column isn’t the only story that received significant attention; junior Derek Thompson’s story, “Open carry in the checkout line: A Publix employee’s view,” earned around 10,000 views. Evidently, the CHAT is growing and being recognized for the hard work its journalists put in. Although the attention in general led to stolen work, the newspaper is continuing to expand in variety.
Senior Emmanuel Baptiste, the CHAT’s JagWire podcast host, explains, “It was shocking to see the content we produce here on the CHAT get turned into an AI video, but if we look at Derek’s story, it has 10,000 views by real people. That just goes to show that the work we do here is getting recognized for good reason.”
As the CHAT expands, whether in terms of stories, multimedia, or even views, whatever comes its way will be for the good of the newspaper and the students who lead it. The CHAT will take this incident involving AI as something to further explore and learn from, but they will continue to strive for more recognition, hopefully, without the help (or hurt) of AI plagiarism.
