Authorship is not absolute invention. It is the attempt to share something real, understandable, responsible – in a way that invites others to think further. And this is what makes authorship an act of structured and conscious thought, not a property to be protected, but a contribution to be held accountable for.
By Sead ZIMERI
The spread of artificial intelligence – especially text generators like ChatGPT, Grok, Claude or Gemini – has raised a deep doubt about the authorship of the texts we read: in journalism, in literature, in philosophy, or even in everyday communication. This doubt is not simply technical, but epistemic and ethical. The question is not only who wrote the text, but who thought the thought and who is responsible for it? Is there a human mind with judgment and intention behind the text, or simply a system that simulates thought?
The concept of authorship is particularly important for students, especially university students, who have to write essays, reports, projects, and take written exams. For them, the question is not simply theoretical, but practical: what are the ethical limits on the use of artificial intelligence? And this question is not just about individual honesty, but about the very understanding we have of education as a process of forming and developing independent thought, where assessment only makes sense when it reflects the student’s personal effort and judgment. If a student presents a text produced by a generative algorithm as their own, then the criterion of assessment falls. We think we are testing the student’s knowledge, but in fact we are assessing an algorithm that has thought nothing of it. This is not just deception; it is the undoing of the very function of education. The relationship between student and teacher – built on trust, responsibility, and mutual effort – is transformed into a false relationship. And if trust collapses, the educational institution loses its legitimacy as a space for formation and knowledge.
The question is not whether to ban the use of AI in academic and educational institutions. On the contrary: it is already part of our lives and will be used more and more – to suggest improvements, to generate alternative ideas, even to help write technical documents. But for this use to be ethical, one thing must be protected at all costs: responsibility for thought.
In many areas of our lives – data analysis, statistical predictions – it would be reasonable to entrust decision-making to AI. But there are situations that require moral judgment, not just logical precision, because no generative system feels the moral burden of responsibility we have towards others. Artificial intelligence can write better than an experienced author. But it cannot worry about us, because it has no interest in our well-being, nor sensitivity to the consequences of the decisions it makes on our behalf. It is therefore not just a question of honesty, but of freedom and autonomy: authorship is a normative relationship with our word, and as such, it is more important today than ever before. Being an author means being an agent of your thought expressed in words – taking responsibility for what you say and facing others not as a generator of words, but as an agent who has reflected. And it is this relationship that education seeks to shape and value. If it disappears, education ceases to be education, and becomes only simulation.
Let’s take a concrete example. I spend a few days or weeks developing a philosophical argument for the ethics of care in teaching—a topic with which I am professionally engaged. I draft the structure, formulate the thesis, consider objections, and try to understand the normative implications of the position I want to make. Then I ask for help from an editor, or a tool like ChatGPT, to help me with style, fluency, or to elaborate on some part more clearly. Even if this help is considerable in restructuring the text, as we teachers often do with our students, the author remains me. Because the thought is mine. And the form in which it takes shape is a form for which I am responsible.
Now consider another case. I have no idea, no structure, no question that makes me think. I simply say to the AI: “Write a text about the professional ethics of teachers. I don’t have the nerve to do it myself.” And I publish the result under my own name, perhaps changing a word here, a sentence there. But essentially, I have done nothing. I have thought nothing. The thought is not mine. And I am not the author. Claiming authorship in this case is an intellectual fraud, a simulation of responsibility that you have not exercised. Authorship arises from judgment. The author is the one who takes an idea, structures it, examines it, pushes it forward, and in the end says: “this is what I want to say.” Everything else is technique.
For this reason, editing, proofreading, translation – even partial or complete rewriting – do not displace authorship. They are forms of assistance, not replacement. A skilled editor can radically transform a text, but as long as he does not replace the idea, the thought put forward, he is not an author. The same applies to artificial intelligence, no matter how “intelligent” it may seem.
Authorship arises when someone takes it upon themselves to think about an idea and stand by it as a personal judgment. It is not a question of formulating it in the most beautiful way, but of following the thought to the end – of making it your own. I, for example, am the author of this text because I have taken the time and effort to think about this problem, to make nuanced conceptual distinctions, and to share it with the reader as an act of thought that I stand by. This is the foundation of authorship: not the ordering of words for the sake of style, but responsibility for the thought they represent. But this responsibility cannot be exercised in the air. It requires a form. And form requires selection. Much of what I am doing now is not just about thought in its inner sense, but about trying to find the right word, the right expression, the rhythm, the tone, the style. We cannot deny that this is an essential part of authorship. I can have my thoughts and never put them in writing – and in an abstract sense, I am their author. But authorship as a social and moral fact requires communication. And communication cannot happen without the embodiment of thought in language: without selection, without form, without responsibility for the way an idea enters the world.
However, we must be careful. There is something dangerous about the way authorship often functions as a form of intellectual property – as if ideas were objects that could be registered, protected by law, and sued in court. But language is shared. No one invents words. No one owns syntax. Ideas are not born in isolation either. They are the fruit of a shared discursive space, of a world that is spoken, experienced, and understood together.
Every author is a debtor: a systematizer, an articulator, a voice that speaks within a heritage that he did not choose, but has appropriated. For this reason, authorship is not an act of solitude, but a form of participation. To think of an idea is not to speak from a vacuum, but to build on a common ground – with the words of others, with shared experiences, with meanings that have been elaborated by entire generations.
Authorship is not an absolute invention. It is an attempt to share something real, understandable, responsible – in a way that invites others to think further. And this is what makes authorship an act of structured and conscious thought, not a property to be protected, but a contribution to be held accountable. Take Marx, for example. Capital is a monumental work, built on thousands of sources: economic data, philosophical theories, working-class experiences. He invented neither the terminology, nor the language, nor the reality it describes. But we still call him its author, rightly so – not because he owns all the content, but because he articulated a thought in a new and powerful form. His responsibility is ethical and epistemic, not proprietary. This is, in my opinion, the meaning worth defending of authorship. Not as power, not as glory, not as property, but as a defined and accountable act of thought. The author is not the master of meaning, but the one who takes responsibility for the mark he leaves in the world.
The question is not whether the texts produced by artificial intelligence are meaningful. Many of them are. But they do not come from a mind that has an attitude, they are not the fruit of an effort that is experienced as work, and it cannot be held responsible for them. They exist, but they do not belong to anyone. As long as we are moral beings – who care about what we do and how we represent ourselves in the world – authorship remains irreplaceable. Because, in the end, thinking is not delegated. And where there is no thinking, there is no responsibility. And where there is no responsibility, there is no author.