Artificial Intelligence in Academic Writing in Higher Education in a Country of Emerging Economy: An Analysis of Knowledge, Perceived Influence, Extent of Use and Perception

This investigation offers an examination of the knowledge, extent of use, perceived influence and perceptions of prospective teachers toward artificial intelligence (AI) in academic writing. Moreover, the study’s content is in the context of a country with emerging economy. This investigation is significant considering that learners from this country have limited access to technology, unstable internet connections and lack of mobile resources. A total of 1040 participants were included in the study, of whom 799 (76.8%) were females. To ensure accurate data collection, the study utilized a structured research instrument adapted from a previous study (Malik et al., Int J Educ Res Open 5:100296, 2023), with a reliability of Cronbach’s alpha = 0.94. The findings of the study indicated that the respondents had proficient knowledge of the use of AI in academic writing. Moreover, more than half of the total respondents (57.6%) frequently utilized AI, and the same number of participants (57.6%) responded that they used AI-generated summaries to simplify difficult articles. The study was able to determine significant relationships among the investigated variables. The interesting implications of the results are discussed in the chapter. Moreover, regardless of gender, the respondents had sufficient knowledge of AI in academic essay writing for both males (M = 3.80) and females (M = 3.84), a notable extent of AI use for males (M = 3.84) and females (M = 3.87), and an impact of AI in writing academic essays for males (M = 3.75) and females (M = 3.78).