Is it plagiarism using an AI to do the bulk of my LaTeX?

Question

I am a graduate student in math. I am coming up on the end of my masters, and multiple classes require LaTeX submissions. These classes are all very difficult by default, and spending multiple hours doing LaTeX only to submit an incomplete homework assignment feels non-constructive to me. I am getting better at LaTeX efficiency, however, I have found options like https://mathpix.com/ which will let me upload PDFs of my handwritten work, and then their AI will output LaTeX code which I can copy to overleaf and tweak for accuracy and formatting. Is this act that I have described plagiarism, or some other (commonly) punishable academic offense?

Answer 1

Overall, no. The tool you use to write something hasn't got the same status as another author. I think it definitely would be treated differently if it was "found out".

One thing, be careful that any text generated isn't accidentally lifted from another document (I think this is unlikely), that can be plagiarism. So just use AI to help generate it, then edit it, check it, and its fine. I think on the whole that's a fair way to look at this issue.

Answer 2

A very interesting issue! Although I do pay a bit of attention to various tech advances, I was not aware that there was any mechanism/app/device that could convert handwritten to TeX.

If any of my math grad students told me that they were using such a thing, I'd probably congratulate them for being ahead of the curve. :) But/and also advise them to double-check! :)

But, yes, many situations would declare that this was not ok... So, you have to ask in advance. I don't think it's "plagiarism" per se, but just maybe "against the rules".

Answer 3

Copying the output of a Large Language Model might be cheating, depending on the rules of the game you're playing, but unless the LLM itself is reproducing the work of a human author, then copying the output of the LLM cannot be plagiarism by any usual definition of the word (see final note, below). Plagiarism requires a human on both branches of the plagiariser/plagiarised fork.

If you are being tested or examined on your ability to write LaTeX, then having a machine produce the LaTeX for you would be considered cheating in the same way that the use of a calculator would be looked upon as cheating if you were being tested on your ability with mental arithmetic. It doesn't sound as if that is an issue in your case.

I have experimented quite a lot with using an LLM to produce LaTeX code, either from my handwriting or from a scanned (printed) document that has been poorly typeset. Here are two examples from handwritten material. The "mathematics" is of course complete junk but the results are impressively useful even if not completely correct.

Example 1

In this first example, I am interested in whether the LLM can get the basic structure of the equations correct. This is the LaTeX code that the LLM produced. \[ \int_{-\infty}^{\omega} N(\eta) \, d\eta - \int_{-z}^{p} e^{-i3\zeta} \, d\zeta \] which is set as

Example 2

In the second example I was interested in whether the LLM could correctly align the equations and also how much of the details (e.g., the bar over one of the digits) would be correctly produced. This was the LaTeX code ... \begin{align*} \sin x &= \sqrt{1 - \cos^2 x} \\ &= 27 \times \Omega \\ &= 2.6 \end{align*} which is set as

As you can see, the results aren't perfect but they are nonetheless very useful.

My advice? Check the rules of the game. Are you being tested on your ability to do mathematics, or on your ability to typeset mathematics? If it is the former, and not the latter, then go ahead and use the LLM. It will potentially save you an immense amount of time (initially) and you will very quickly become familiar with the idiom of LaTeX so that:

1. You no longer need to rely on the LLM to the same degree but will be able to type your LaTeX directly, and
2. You will be able to give more nuanced instructions to your LLM so that it can set the mathematics in exactly the way that you want.

Note: ... from the Cambridge Dictionary of English. "plagiarism: the process or practice of using another person's ideas or work and pretending that it is your own"

Answer 4

Here is a good rule of thumb to understand what constitutes plagiarism.

Plagiarism is - in spirit - about claiming intellectual credit for yourself that you did not do, but copied from someone (or had someone do for you).

[That's why self-plagiarism is called "plagiarism", although it's a bit controversial naming. The use of that latter term focuses not so much on the aspect of stealing credit from others (which regular plagiarism also implies), but on claiming credit that you don't deserve (because you already received it earlier).]

Back to your question: Under above interpretation, as long as the AI does not carry out any intellectual work that you are supposed to do, you should be fine.

For instance, if the course involves actually learning to use LaTeX, it would be plagiarism. If the course only involves somehow typesetting the material in whatever way is suitable, you could ask the tutor if it is legitimate to use an AI helper for that purpose and to cite it if relevant.

Answer 5

As many answers have already pointed out, this would not be plagiarism. However, you should be aware that by using an AI, you turn over your data to them- that is, future users might plagiarise you. Using the example provider that you linked, here is their privacy FAQ (emphasis mine):

New and different images allow Mathpix to improve current recognition features and add new recognition features. If you allow Mathpix to use your images, anonymized versions of your images may be chosen for algorithm training purposes by our QA team. Regardless of if an image is selected by QA or not, all images in the QA database are permanently deleted after 60 days.

So while your use might not constitute plagiarism, others might plagiarise using the future trained model of this AI. If it's just homework it is probably okay, but a Master's thesis could already be something worth pursuing in a PhD.

In this case, the provider suggests that you can opt out. This would be something to always check when you use an AI provider, and proceed with caution.

Answer 6

Ask the person teaching the course

Only they know whether the (secondary) goal of the course is to teach you LaTeX skills or not. If it is, using an unapproved tool might circumvent that didactic goal. If it isn't, it's still up to the teacher to decide which tools are ok to use for their course and which aren't.

And don't ask about plagiarism. That's not the issue here. Ask whether you are allowed to use that tool for your coursework.

Since these AI tools are fairly new, there is no "established consensus" on this issue, so be prepared for answers ranging from "Absolutely not!" to "Sure, why would you even ask?" to "Uh, no idea, I need some time to think about that"¹.

---

^{¹ Next week on academa.SE: "Should I allow my student to use an AI tool for LaTeX markup?"}

Answer 7

I'm going to go against the consensus here and argue that what you are doing is self-defeating, whether or not it is technically plagiarism.

I'm sure your lecturers aren't asking for submissions in LaTeX in order to torture you. It's possible they are doing it for their own convenience (because well-written LaTeX is much easier to read than handwriting); but it seems much more likely that training you to use LaTeX is part of the course goals – LaTeX is, like it or not, the "industry standard" for typesetting mathematical documents and so being able to write in LaTeX is a necessary skill for a mathematician. If so, then using a fancy OCR program to generate TeX from handwritten math is cheating.

It's really not that hard to pick up; with a little practice, you can get fluent enough that you can even take notes in lectures directly into LaTeX in real time ("live-TeXing"). Unless you have a disability which prevents you from using a normal keyboard (or something of that sort), then I suspect that in the time it's taken you to find this handwriting-recognition website, learn to use it, then fret about whether it's allowed or not, you could have sharpened your LaTeX skills to the point where you don't need to cheat any more.

Answer 8

This question, like most questions of the kind "Is X plagiarism" can easily be answered by going back to the fundamental reason(s) why plagiarism is considered such a grave offense against academic integrity in the first place.

Traceability of ideas

The primary and most important reason why plagiarism is a Bad Thing™️, is the importance of traceability of ideas in academia, science, research, culture, art, music, …, and really, society in general. But specifically in academia.

Imagine, you find a flaw in someone's argument. Or, since you are a mathematician, imagine, you find a flaw in someone's proof. It's a subtle flaw that took a while to spot, so, there have already been new papers written by other authors, relying on the theorem.

Traceability guarantees that it is possible to find every paper relying on the theorem and see if the flaw affects them or not. If the author of the original paper got the idea for the proof from somewhere else, then traceability guarantees that you can find the root cause of the flaw, and find other papers that might have picked the flawed idea up from the original source.

Plagiarism is a problem because it breaks the chain of ideas, so an idea can no longer be traced backwards to its original source or forwards to all the other ideas that build on it. This means that any flaw discovered in the idea cannot be fixed: it cannot be fixed at the root, because you don't know where the root is. It often cannot be fixed by the plagiator, because, well, they "stole" the idea and there is a chance they don't actually understand how it works!

Even if there isn't a flaw in the idea, there is still a problem: say, you want to build your idea on top of someone else's idea, but there is some detail you don't quite understand. So, you contact the author and ask them about it. If that author plagiarized the idea, there is now a possibility that they don't understand the idea enough to be able to answer your question. In the unrealistic best case, they will admit to plagiarism and point you to the original source. The probably more realistic case is, they just ghost you. The worst case is, they make up something, and it is convincing enough that you don't notice right away and go off and start building your idea on top of this made up answer, potentially wasting a lot of time, resources, money, and effort, until you notice there is something wrong.

Traceability is also one of the reasons why self-plagiarism is a thing: it still "breaks the chain". If you use the same idea in two different papers without properly referencing and citing it and someone looks at one of the two papers and finds a flaw, they have no way of knowing that there is a whole other paper out there with the same flaw. Other authors may have cited only one of the two papers, so there may be whole separate chain of papers all built on the flawed idea that nobody knows about.

Recognizing contributions

The reason that is often cited as the most important or even only reason, but is actually secondary in my opinion, is that contributing good ideas should be recognized. An author, group, or organization which advances the field should get credit for this advancement. In other words, the giants whose shoulders you stand on, should be rewarded for carrying the load.

This is another, although admittedly much weaker, argument for why self-plagiarism is a thing: you get twice the recognition for one idea. However, I find this a pretty weak argument, and I can see how people don't get why self-plagiarism is a problem if the idea of plagiarism is merely presented as "stealing someone's credit". That is why, in my opinion, focusing on the traceability aspect is important.

Conclusion

I think it should be obvious when applying the two criteria above that what you are doing is not plagiarism.

However, as pointed out in other answers and comments as well, it might still be academic misconduct in other ways. In particular, if demonstrating proficiency in LaTeX is part of the course goal, then it might be considered cheating. Or, it might be considered clever use of available tools.

Answer 9

This isn't really an answer to your question but too long for a comment. (Largely an elaboration on David Loeffler's answer.)

In my math graduate courses I require all of the homework to be typed. I don't require the students to use any specific software, but I encourage them to start using LaTeX if they aren't already. I would not consider the use of AI tools that you describe to be plagiarism, or any other kind of cheating in my classes.

However, there are three reasons I require the homework to be typed:

1. So that it is legible.

2. When students take their handwritten scratchwork and type it up, they go through another round of thinking about their arguments (in my experience, more thorough than when they just recopy by hand) and end up with better reasoned (and more likely to be correct) work.

3. They will all eventually need to be able to use LaTeX fluently, and it's better to start learning sooner rather than later.

Your system partially defeats the second and third reasons. Only partially, since you're still typing up the text part yourself, plus reading and tweaking the AI's LaTeX output. So I get, and don't fully disagree with, your choice to do things this way at this stage, when you are pressed for time and focusing on learning the math. But although as I said I wouldn't consider what you're doing to be cheating, I see it as not really in the spirit of the requirement.

Answer 10

In my opinion there should be no issue in using such methods for mechanistic conversions (as opposed to generation of text, solutions, ideas, etc.), assuming you check the output for accuracy, of course. In spirit, it is the same as using OCR. Further, I am not aware of anyone having objections to use of Detexify, which also uses a machine learning method. I see no clear reason for why it would be OK to use machine learning methods to recognize one symbol at a time, but not entire equations or sections... That said, Mathpix's marketing leans heavily into the AI angle so it may be a likelier target of overly broad policies. Finally, the data security concern raised in this answer is worth taking into account.

As some answers have mentioned, courses and assignments where the goal is to learn using (La)TeX can be different in this regard from cases where (La)TeX is just used to typeset documents, and it's worth asking the instructor about both rules and advice. Jumping straight to automation tools like this may mean you overlook learning useful structures and how to effectively read TeX. However, at the same time, personally I tend to think that such courses should introduce useful tools like this (and, e.g., various editors, online table generators, and the TeX StackExchange!) that help overcoming the (often exaggerated) entry barriers to learning (La)TeX. Having to constantly flip through tables of symbols until you learn a sufficient number of commands for math symbols was frustrating, but hasn't been necessary for a while now, and courses ought to reflect this reality.

Answer 11

I saw handwriting input for equations years ago. It was used with Word, but used a TeX-like format at least as an intermediate step. That required using writing on a graphics tablet rather than scanning, but fundamentally it's the same concept (and akin to a cleverer version of automatically generating bounding boxes round characters and feeding them to detexify).

So this is an improved input tool. It's not plagiarism.

That doesn't mean it's not cheating in a LaTeX course, where the goal is to learn to write your own code. But there are also click-and-place equation generators for TeX and I'd see those in the same light.

Answer 12

I think you should talk to the prof, as it's possible that learning LaTex is one of their educational objectives.

That said, IMO, if you use a tool to turn your handwritten notes into LaTex, and then prominently cite the tool and say in the submissions how LaTex was generated, then this is NOT an academic honesty problem (with the caveat that there may be language in the syllabus saying that it IS an academic honesty problem -- maybe "all turned in work must be your own" or some such -- in which case, it assuredly is). This way, you haven't claimed, in any way, personal provenance over work that isn't yours. You may certainly lose points for not doing it "right", but that doesn't make it an honesty issue.

Answer 13

What is the assignement about?

Is the evaluation based on the quality of LaTex code?

If yes, and learning LaTex is part of the course and therefore an essential part of the hand-in? -> don't use it!

If not, and it is about the content, and the format is simply required to be LaTex? -> No problem!

Why this is not a problem

(stated well in other answers)

Assumption: as stated, the tool does not do anything generative. Even if other sources were used to train it, so have other sources been used to train humans -> the tool should cite sources used, but this doesn't mean that there is content in there.

Plagiarism applies to ideas and content. You could cite the tools you use (in academia, that would surely be the right way), such as LaTex itself, maybe a compiler etc. But if you use handwritten text as a base, Word and a converter, whether you use a keyboard or voice promts to write: it's irrelevant.

Answer 14

plagiarism - no

other academic misconduct - no, unless one of the purposes of the course or the assignment is for you to learn LaTeX, in which case, you would be cheating.

If not certain, you can always ask your instructor.