The rise of AI co-authors: navigating the future of scientific writing with ChatGPT

ChatGPt is an artificial intelligence (AI) tool for conversational language developed by OpenAI.Trained on a massive amount of text data, ChatGPt can generate human-like responses to a wide range of prompts and questions.As AI technology continues to advance, it is likely that in the near future we will see an increasing number of manuscripts generated, at least partially, by ChatGPT or similar software.To highlight the ease with which AI technology can be used to generate coherent commentary on topical neurosurgical issues, we asked ChatGPT to write two letters to the editor.For the first letter ChatGPT was instructed to advocate for prenatal closure of myelomeningocele and in the second letter to advocate against it.Then, to demonstrate that ChatGPT language use incorporates plasticity rather than relying on repetition, the same instructional phrase was used to ask the program to write a second letter advocating for prenatal closure (Supplementary Materials).It should be noted that ChatGPT is trained on conversational data from public information sources and is not trained on scientific articles or sources.However, with additional referencing software it will only be a matter of time before we start receiving ChatGPT-derived manuscripts capable of citing reference articles and the information within them.In fact, this introduction was written, in part, with the assistance of ChatGPT.It is important for the Journal of Neurosurgery to be prepared as soon as possible to receive and review manuscripts generated by AI (Fig. 1).As the credibility of any publication depends on the accuracy of the information it presents, establishing clear guidelines and standards for the use of AI in the writing of manuscripts is crucial to ensure that the information presented is trustworthy and valuable to the field.