Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A figure caption drafted entirely by GPT-4 from a researcher-supplied data table
- Is an instance
An abstract generated by an LLM from a full paper's text
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A human-written paragraph that an AI grammar tool has reordered for clarity
Editorial commentary
AI-generated content is text, images, code, or other artefacts produced substantively by a generative AI system in response to a prompt, where the AI system is the proximate source of the content — as distinct from AI-assisted content, where a human author drafts the substantive material and uses AI only to refine, edit, or check it. The distinction matters because publisher and funder policies (ICMJE, COPE, most major journals) draw disclosure and authorship rules along exactly this line: AI cannot be listed as an author under current major-publisher policy, but AI-generated content used within a manuscript must typically be disclosed regardless of who or what is credited as author.
Why the line is harder to draw in practice than in policy
Most real manuscript-drafting workflows sit somewhere between the two poles — a researcher may draft an outline, generate a paragraph with AI, then substantially rewrite it, at which point classifying the final text as purely “AI-generated” or purely “AI-assisted” becomes a genuine judgement call rather than a clean binary. Disclosure statements that name the specific tool, version, and the portions or types of task it was used for are more useful to a reader, and a more defensible institutional record, than a single yes/no declaration.
References
Also known as
AI output · Machine-generated content · Synthetic content
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="AI-generated content"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/ai-generated-content" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/ai-generated-content",
"name": "AI-generated content",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/ai-generated-content",
"description": "Text, images, code, or other artefacts produced substantively by a generative AI system in response to a prompt, where the AI is the proximate source of the content rather than a tool refining human-authored material.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/genai-disclosure#set",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/ai-generated-content",
"alternateName": [
"AI output",
"Machine-generated content",
"Synthetic content"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"publisher": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
},
"author": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#editorial-team"
},
"datePublished": "2026-05-21T01:54:11",
"dateModified": "2026-09-05T14:21:43",
"inLanguage": "en-GB",
"isAccessibleForFree": true
}
