“Who is the Author?”: Discursive Effects of the (Non)Use of Artificial Intelligence in Textual Productions

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article addresses the relationship between AIs, authorship, and education, considering the contradictions involved in the integration of AIs into academic and school contexts. Based on Michel Pêcheux’s Discourse Analysis, it examines statements from X/Twitter that materialize a tension between the use of AIs and a claim of (non)authorship. It is argued that the normalization of academic/school discourse and the bureaucratization of education produce an effect of indistinction regarding authorship, given the efficiency of AIs, such as ChatGPT, in generating “perfect” texts according to a technical standardization of Writing Discourses. The results expose contradictions surrounding authorship but, above all, the contradictions arising from the encounter, in digital materiality, between technical and discursive standardizations, which challenge the very mechanisms of legitimation in writing, particularly, in the case of the material analyzed here, the criteria that determine(d) the attribution of authorship.