  The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology and its impact on
education has been a topic of growing concern in recent years. The new
generation AI systems such as chatbots have become more accessible on the
Internet and stronger in terms of capabilities. The use of chatbots,
particularly ChatGPT, for generating academic essays at schools and colleges
has sparked fears among scholars. This study aims to explore the originality of
contents produced by one of the most popular AI chatbots, ChatGPT. To this end,
two popular plagiarism detection tools were used to evaluate the originality of
50 essays generated by ChatGPT on various topics. Our results manifest that
ChatGPT has a great potential to generate sophisticated text outputs without
being well caught by the plagiarism check software. In other words, ChatGPT can
create content on many topics with high originality as if they were written by
someone. These findings align with the recent concerns about students using
chatbots for an easy shortcut to success with minimal or no effort. Moreover,
ChatGPT was asked to verify if the essays were generated by itself, as an
additional measure of plagiarism check, and it showed superior performance
compared to the traditional plagiarism-detection tools. The paper discusses the
need for institutions to consider appropriate measures to mitigate potential
plagiarism issues and advise on the ongoing debate surrounding the impact of AI
technology on education. Further implications are discussed in the paper.
