Academic Integrity in the Face of Generative Language Models

The increasing sophistication of generative language models and their widespread accessibility to the general public has been a cause of growing concern in academia in recent years. While these AI technologies have the potential to greatly enhance the learning experience and facilitate research, they also pose a significant threat to academic integrity. This paper investigates the impact of using tools like chatGPT and other large language models (LLM) in higher education, discussing their potential benefits while focusing more on assessing the risks, including the possibility of plagiarism, cheating, and other types of academic misconduct. It explores how these technologies may be used to undermine established scholarly principles and practices, as well as the challenges of identifying and combating academic dishonesty. Some measures universities and academics may employ in order to mitigate such risks are proposed, and several strategies and tools for detecting AI-generated content are discussed, along with their limitations.