Is using source material to develop blog topics or gather facts for your posts OK? Yep, it’s even encouraged. Good original content comes from curiosity, research, and inspiration. However, the line between inspiration and imitation has always been thin, and now, thanks to AI, it’s getting even thinner.
Let’s talk about where the line is regarding original content and how not to trip over it in public.
AI is a tool
We know, AI is everywhere right now. ChatGPT, Jasper, Claude, Gemini, CoPilot. These are tools that promise to crank out blog posts, emails, social posts, video scripts, and your company’s next great tagline in 3.7 seconds or less.
If you need ready-to-publish content that represents your brand voice and builds trust with your audience, AI doesn’t generate that human touch, or voice (yet anyway).
Quick example, we were recently presented with an email draft from a client that was riddled with inaccuracies and read like HAL from “2001.” The culprit? ChatGPT!
AI struggles with the nuance, empathy, and strategic storytelling that real human writers and storytellers bring to the table with original content. AI may be fast and occasionally clever, but it also makes mistakes–factual, grammatical, tonal, even ethical!
It doesn’t know your industry. It doesn’t understand your customer’s emotional journey. And it sure doesn’t know how to consistently be on-brand, SEO-optimized, legally compliant, and interesting.
AI also opens another can of worms: unintentional plagiarism.
Is AI plagiarizing?
It’s tricky. AI tools don’t “copy” writing in the old-fashioned sense. They generate content by analyzing tons of existing text, blogs, articles, Wikipedia entries, marketing copy, and then statistically predict what words should come next based on your prompt. That also means they’re influenced by published material, often echoing common phrases, structural patterns, or word-for-word segments that already exist.
That perfect paragraph it just gave you? It may have already been published nearly verbatim on another company’s blog, maybe even one of your competitors. (We’ve seen some cringeworthy repeated content from a client’s competitor.)
This is a big deal because even if the content was generated by a machine, you are responsible for publishing it. Google, copyright lawyers, and the very-human readers who engage with your brand don’t care who wrote it. They care that it’s accurate, original, and not a lazy echo of someone else’s work.
While we’re waving the red flag, let’s not forget about that old-school offense: traditional plagiarism.
You might think no one is still copying full articles and passing them off as their own, but trust us, it still happens. People try to justify it with “I found it on Google, so it’s OK to use, right?”
No. That’s not how copyright works.
Beyond outright copy-paste theft, there’s an often unintentional form of plagiarism that pops up in marketing all the time: “borrowing” phrasing from sources without attribution. Maybe you found the perfect way a competitor explained a technical concept. Maybe you changed a few words and assumed that was transformed into original content.
Nope.
Even if your intentions are good, even if it’s “just a sentence,” even if “everyone in the industry phrases it that way,” if it didn’t come from you and it’s not cited, you’re walking on shaky ground. Copyright infringement isn’t just copying entire articles. It also takes into account replicating tone, structure, and phrasing that clearly originates from someone else’s intellectual property.
Using source material isn’t illegal; it’s essential. Thoughtful original content is the result of research, comparison, and learning from what’s already out there. That’s how you stay relevant. That’s how you build authority.
Here’s how to stay in the clear with original content
- Use plagiarism checkers, such as Grammarly, Copyscape, and Originality.ai. They can flag copy that’s too close to existing material.
- Cite your sources. Link back to the original author or article when quoting, summarizing, or referencing data.
- Don’t trust AI for facts. It can spurt out fake stats, sources, and even product names.
- Be honest with yourself. If a sentence sounds familiar, dig a little deeper. If you’re not sure it’s your original content, it’s probably not.
Let’s be real, your audience can tell when you’re faking it (and so can Google).
