Death mask post-plagiarism

In March of 2025, I was notified by a fellow writer that many contemporary published works had been infiltrated by AI. “You need to check,” she warned. After I verified the website wasn’t a scam, I plugged in my information. It was true. My work as well as the work of every other published writer I know has indeed been compromised.

This isn’t new. I would be hard-pressed to find a field that isn’t impacted by AI. My friend’s voice over work dried up within six months of the launch of AI. Hadn’t my colleagues seen an alarming uptick in student use of plagiarism?

 I guess I thought published writers were protected by copyright. But honestly, what recourse do any of us have? What do you do when a void steals your voice? Somewhere at some time we all clicked something that enabled someone access to everything.

To learn more about the implications in our school system, I attended one of the dozens of sessions on Artificial Intelligence in Education at the NCTE convention in Boston. I took copious notes on the ways in which teachers can explore the limitations and uses of AI within our English classes. It was only after I returned to my school and discussed this with a co-worker that it occurred to me to question what I learned.

“Who funded the sessions?” he asked. “Did you ask?”

I don’t have to tell you the answer.

I like to think of my naiveté as refreshing.

Still, I wasn’t too worried about the implication in education. A reduced reliance on technology in our writing process definitely curbs AI usage. More importantly, I believe we are wired with a desire to do work that matters, and as long as I provide real-world opportunities for students to do meaningful work, the temptation of AI is dramatically decreased. I teach a capstone project course and Creative Writing. In my classes, authentic student voices matter.

Then we had the faculty meeting where our administration asked us to consider the applications of AI in our subject areas. Fellow English teachers talked about adapting reading passages to appropriate Lexile reading levels or translating into different languages. I found myself thinking about the author of the passages, their work compromised and altered without permission, but I couldn’t deny how beneficial this would be to our students.

But some teachers admitted to using AI to grade papers. Just plug in the rubric…
Wait, my best writers do not fit neatly into rubrics.
To write letters of recommendation.
Every letter I write is highly personal–no computer could ever…

As the conversation continued, I Googled the company our school had hired to help us navigate and explore AI usage. On their Educational Technology website, I found a link to an article that discussed a “post-plagiarism” future where writing was a hybrid between human and AI-generated work that would ultimately “expand human creativity.”

I opened ChatGPT. I typed my name and the name of my first published novel and I asked it to write a short story in the style of me. Within 30 seconds, it did. Poorly. But enough to show it had clearly found some of me somewhere. It oozed bits and pieces–recognizable characters with similar names and conflicts and dynamics.

After the faculty meeting, I printed the AI-generated story. Then I asked AI to provide me with the code it used to create my story. I printed that, too. I didn’t know why, but I felt like I needed to record the moment.

I wanted to write out what I was feeling, but I felt betrayed by words. So I used my hands. I dusted off a canvas in my basement. I shredded my original words, made them into a pasty mush of flour and water. I covered the canvas with the particles and the burnt pieces from my fire pit. I covered my face in plaster, leaving the orifices gaping. Plenty of space for whatever might want to get in or out. Then I assembled it.

I put the AI code in my head.

I shredded the AI generated story and oozed it out of my eyes and mouth.

I wired my hand, collecting the shreds.

When I was done, my husband was concerned. He said the artwork was unsettling.

“Well, I feel unsettled.”

“It’s not that,” he said. “You’ve made a death mask.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that I was doing something ritualistic. In my subsequent research, I discovered there are also life masks. But if the symbol represents the loss of individualism, is it living? Maybe if it becomes a part of everything, we never die. Okay, initially making a plaster mask of myself seemed pretty morbid and self-centered.
 I found comfort in the two classes I teach at my high school. Both the senior capstone class and Creative Writing require students to identify what authors and speakers care about, study techniques used to engage readers and listeners, and apply what they learn to the subjects they care about. In short, they sift through their experiences and interests and write what only they can write using their own authentic voice. Students share their presentations and original work with real audiences that extend outside of the school walls.

But the week before graduation I discovered that many of my seniors used AI to generate their final short story projects. How did I know they used AI? Of course, it didn’t sound like them. The writing was soulless. But the proof was that it followed a prescribed pattern that I recognized as the AI code for writing short stories. To identify the work as AI, I asked AI to provide me with the code used to generate the story. A zero on this would result in the seniors failing the class and not graduating.

I consulted with my division chair about how to proceed. I knew this should be an automatic zero, but I understood where the temptation came from. Insecurity. Time constraints. Fear. Would it be okay if I gave the students an opportunity to fix this?

They are only human.

I didn’t expect to cry when I talked to my classes about what happened, but I did. Rather than identify individual students, I begged those who had plagiarized to resubmit their work. Please. I don’t want to be the reason you don’t walk across the stage. They had 24 hours before my final grades were due. I told them I understood the pressure they were under. I told them I did not care if their submission was riddled with errors. Just write something true–it would count. All I’d ever wanted was their authentic voice. 

Most were upfront. They apologized and expressed gratitude for the opportunity to resubmit. One said he had no idea how easy it would be to write something when it was just the truth. Others didn’t trust me to not use their words against them. They said, “I was worried you might think I plagiarized so I just rewrote it.” Worst of all, one student who had not plagiarized was so worried that I thought they’d plagiarized that they spent their last day of high school with the guidance counselor. In all, twelve students resubmitted their stories.

In one of the final reflections, a student made the case for their use of AI. They said the story was their idea, but they had never been very good at description, so they’d asked AI to add some. And they were trying to think of possible plot points, so they asked AI to give suggestions. And they were trying to think of a name for a character, and they’d asked AI to give them some possibilities. But everything else was 100% their own. It was a tool.

Is that wrong? they wanted to know. Did I do something wrong?

The honest answer is, I don’t know. I know where my line is, and I’m not sure that I have the authority to draw it for other people. We all have different ideas about where the line is drawn.

Look at me, still trying to keep an open mind.

---