AI can be a useful tool in various parts of the writing process when used responsibly. However, Diplomatic Courier’s official policy is that no AI–generated content, whether written directly by AI or verbatim suggestions from AI proofreaders, may be included in drafts submitted to Diplomatic Courier.
- AI–generated content or assisted articulation of your ideas often struggles with getting facts right or proper contextual articulation.
- It also incorporates certain stylistic patterns which are readily recognizable, and which incorporate rhetorical devices which minimize impact.
Ensuring human provenance is therefore critical both to ensuring accuracy but also differentiating our content in visible ways from the AI–generated content that takes up increasing amounts of digital space.
To do so, our editorial team makes use of tools to detect AI–generated or assisted patterns. However, if we email you with edits referencing our AI policy, this doesn’t mean we believe you violated our AI policy. Most AI–generated or assisted patterns are indistinguishable from widely used but suboptimal stylistic patterns and rhetorical tools. This means our feedback will do two things: help maximize impact and help our expert network tweak writing styles to more clearly signal human provenance—something we believe will be extremely powerful in the years to come.
FAQs
- Can I use AI to help with the research process?
Yes. Ensure to ask for sourcing and to check those sources’ authenticity as well as factuality of claims made by the AI.
- Can I use AI to help with initial drafting?
Yes. And we recognize many, especially if English is not your native language, will find value from this. However, final articulation of your submitted draft must be in the author’s own words and not reliant on AI construction or articulation.
- Can I use AI in my own editing process to check for mistakes before submitting?
Yes. Gen-AI and AI-powered proofreading tools can be very helpful. However, use their proofreading suggestions and make changes in your own words rather than using verbatim suggestions.
- Can my submission be rejected because it was identified as AI-generated?
We won’t reject your piece simply because it is identified as likely to be AI-generated or assisted. However, these pieces will not be published without required edits,and in extreme cases these may be substantial enough to require a functional rewrite.
- Do you have any suggestions for best practice use of AI?
Yes. See some examples of how AI can be a great help below.
- Use AI to help research within defined parameters, not general questions. Ask for reliable sources that score well on bias and factuality checkers. Rather than asking AI for analysis of the sources, ask for a short overview of what the sources mean to your question to reduce the likelihood of bad information. Read the sources as if you’d done your own research to ensure quality.
- AI can help you structure your argument, but isn’t so good at articulating it. AI is better for building an outline than it is at building a draft.
- While AI may not be great at articulating arguments without a lot of human help, it can assist you in refining your articulation. For instance, you can ask for suggestions on how to reword your submission to better suit a particular type of audience. Or, if you are personally close to an issue and wish to avoid inadvertent loaded language, AI can assist ensuring you avoid ideological language or straw man arguments. Again, ensure you’re not simply copy-pasting suggestions but using those suggestions to refine your own voice.
