Is it ethical to use ChatGPT or other similar AI platforms to write an essay for you if you take the time to fact check it before submitting it?

Any rules the people marking your essay have set out will trump what I’m about to say, but my answer would be an unequivocal no.

Remember, plagiarism is what happens when you attempt to pass off work which isn’t yours as being yours. So if ChatGPT or its friends have written the essay for you and you then say “This is my original work”, you’re plagiarising. That’s just as much academic misconduct as if you got another person to write your essay for you.

Fact-checking isn’t a bad idea, especially since AIs tend to make up their own facts as they see fit sometimes (you can find examples of this pretty easily, but the “fastest aquatic mammal” and “number of Rs in strawberry” exchanges are the first two which come to mind for me) as a result of the way they work. That being said, if you’re going to set aside time to check facts - and citations, if you’re writing that kind of an essay - it’s beyond me why you wouldn’t want to spend the time actually doing your own work and learning.

It’s also worth remembering that AI platforms have a tendency to produce very bland writing. You’re better than that.