This paper critically re-evaluates the concept of plagiarism in light of the unfolding seismic revolution brought about by the sweeping global deployment of generative artificial intelligence as a commodity in the global capitalist marketplace, aimed primarily at astronomical profit extraction, and its disruptive encroachment upon the realm of human intellectual activity. At the same time, drawing in part on the insights gained from this re-evaluation, it addresses a range of pressing questions that are currently keeping policymakers, designers, and service providers in the educational sectors of the major strongholds of modern global capitalism awake at night. Beginning with an archaeological excavation of the term “plagiarism,” the study traces its sociohistorical emergence, revealing how the concept is deeply entangled with modern notions of individual authorship, originality, and intellectual property—categories which only began to take shape in the early modern period. Drawing on historical semantics and the legal-political genealogy of authorship, the first half of the paper unpacks the ideological and institutional forces that gave rise to the plagiarism discourse and its accompanying moral infrastructure. The second half begins with a critical reflection on the emergence and socio-historical role of education, laying the groundwork for clarifying the author’s own position on what should be understood by the term “education.” Building on this, it proceeds to critically discuss, on the one hand, the pedagogical and educational potential of generative AI, and, on the other, to synchronically interrogate the practical validity of the concept of plagiarism within today’s ever more AI-saturated knowledge economy. Here, the paper scrutinizes how Gen-AI models—trained on vast corpora of human output—both reproduce, redefine, deride and destabilize inherited assumptions of authorship and originality. By exposing the contradictions between normative plagiarism protocols and the operational logic of Gen-AI, the study problematizes the legitimacy and utility of current plagiarism enforcement regimes. Rather than advocating simple reform or technological enhancement of detection systems, the concluding section proposes a radical epistemological shift: away from static notions of ownership and toward an ethics of transformation, citation, and accountability adapted to collective and machinic forms of creativity. This alternative framework challenges us to reconceive authorship not as a proprietary act but as a situated practice within overlap-ping human–machine semiotic ecologies.

Rewriting the Code of “Intellectual Ownership”: Plagiarism in the Age of Generative AI

会议论文
发表日期：

2026年

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Abdurrahman Gülbeyaz

摘要

This paper critically re-evaluates the concept of plagiarism in light of the unfolding seismic revolution brought about by the sweeping global deployment of generative artificial intelligence as a commodity in the global capitalist marketplace, aimed primarily at astronomical profit extraction, and its disruptive encroachment upon the realm of human intellectual activity. At the same time, drawing in part on the insights gained from this re-evaluation, it addresses a range of pressing questions that are currently keeping policymakers, designers, and service providers in the educational sectors of the major strongholds of modern global capitalism awake at night. Beginning with an archaeological excavation of the term “plagiarism,” the study traces its sociohistorical emergence, revealing how the concept is deeply entangled with modern notions of individual authorship, originality, and intellectual property—categories which only began to take shape in the early modern period. Drawing on historical semantics and the legal-political genealogy of authorship, the first half of the paper unpacks the ideological and institutional forces that gave rise to the plagiarism discourse and its accompanying moral infrastructure. The second half begins with a critical reflection on the emergence and socio-historical role of education, laying the groundwork for clarifying the author’s own position on what should be understood by the term “education.” Building on this, it proceeds to critically discuss, on the one hand, the pedagogical and educational potential of generative AI, and, on the other, to synchronically interrogate the practical validity of the concept of plagiarism within today’s ever more AI-saturated knowledge economy. Here, the paper scrutinizes how Gen-AI models—trained on vast corpora of human output—both reproduce, redefine, deride and destabilize inherited assumptions of authorship and originality. By exposing the contradictions between normative plagiarism protocols and the operational logic of Gen-AI, the study problematizes the legitimacy and utility of current plagiarism enforcement regimes. Rather than advocating simple reform or technological enhancement of detection systems, the concluding section proposes a radical epistemological shift: away from static notions of ownership and toward an ethics of transformation, citation, and accountability adapted to collective and machinic forms of creativity. This alternative framework challenges us to reconceive authorship not as a proprietary act but as a situated practice within overlap-ping human–machine semiotic ecologies.