Is AI-Produced Humanities Scholarship a Case of Research Misconduct?

Abstract As large language-models (“LLMs”) become increasingly capable of producing publishable scholarship, researchers have acquired the ability to personalize LLMs with their own style and academic values to generate entire manuscripts: a practice this paper calls “persona authorship.” This paper investigates whether submitting such AI-generated manuscripts in the humanities under the human author’s name, especially without disclosure, constitutes intrinsic research misconduct. Surveying four examples of research misconduct—deception, fraud, negligence, and corruption—this paper argues that persona authorship does not clearly violate any fundamental norms of academic research, at least not necessarily more than traditional (human) authorship commonly does. In particular, persona authorship need not be wrongfully deceptive; it does not clearly constitute serious fraud; it need not be inherently more negligent than similar, human-authored work; and the corruption it threatens may be mitigated or avoided. This paper concludes that persona authorship is not obviously a case of serious research misconduct, but cautions that its widespread adoption may exacerbate systemic problems in academic publishing, such as overproduction of unimportant or insular work and further marginalization of scholars who do not have access to high-end AI tools. Therefore, scholars must adapt proactively, in the face of this impending AI integration, to preserve the health and vitality of humanities scholarship.