# Can AI be a moral victim? The role of moral patiency and ownership perceptions in ethical judgments of using AI-generated content

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.26956 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.26956/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 63 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Apr 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [The Role of Inclusion, Control, and Ownership in Workplace AI-Mediated Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.11599/) (2023)
- [Perceptions of Sentient AI and Other Digital Minds: Evidence from the AI, Morality, and Sentience (AIMS) Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08867/) (2024)
- ["It was 80% me, 20% AI": Seeking Authenticity in Co-Writing with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.13032/) (2024)
- [Governance of Generative AI in Creative Work: Consent, Credit, Compensation, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.11457/) (2025)
- [LLMs as Writing Assistants: Exploring Perspectives on Sense of Ownership and Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00027/) (2024)
- [Foregrounding Artist Opinions: A Survey Study on Transparency, Ownership, and Fairness in AI Generative Art](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15497/) (2024)
- [Listening to the Voices: Describing Ethical Caveats of Conversational User Interfaces According to Experts and Frequent Users](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14746/) (2024)
- [Writing with AI Lowers Psychological Ownership, but Longer Prompts Can Help](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03108/) (2024)
- [Robots, Chatbots, Self-Driving Cars: Perceptions of Mind and Morality Across Artificial Intelligences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.18683/) (2025)
- [Workshop Paper: An empirical study to understand how students use ChatGPT for writing essays and how it affects their ownership](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.13890/) (2024)
- [Is AI Changing the Rules of Academic Misconduct? An In-depth Look at Students' Perceptions of 'AI-giarism'](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03358/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The growing use of generative AI raises ethical concerns about authorship and plagiarism. This study examines how people judge the reuse of AI-generated content, focusing on moral patiency and ownership perceptions. In an experiment, participants evaluated two substantively similar manuscripts in which the original source was described as authored by a human, an AI system, or an AI agent with a human-like name. Results showed that copying AI-generated work was judged less unethical, less plagiaristic, and less guilt-inducing than copying human-authored work. Mediation analyses revealed that this leniency stemmed from lower perceptions of AI's capacity to suffer harm (moral patiency) and greater ownership attributed to the human writer reusing AI-generated content. Anthropomorphic cues shaped moral evaluations indirectly by reducing perceived ownership. These findings shed light on how people morally disengage when using AI-generated work and highlight differences in how ethical judgments are applied to human versus AI-created content.