Human authors’ reflections on scholarly writing using AI

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has created opportunities as well as challenges for educators. While educators broadly recognise the value of GenAI as a tool in education, they have also been gaining greater insights into the potential risks posed by using GenAI. In the last few years there have been a number of publications evaluating the pros and cons of GenAI use in higher education. Educators are keenly aware that GenAI is being used by students in writing assignments, sometimes without following institutional AI usage policies. There is inherent risk in this. Overall, there are still many questions around how best to use GenAI in education. In this article the authors explored how GenAI could be used to write a basic draft on a particular topic, using various prompts. The AI generated draft was then reviewed by the authors who identified gaps and other issues such as referencing. The main issues identified were the lack of depth in points covered in the AI generated article and poor critical evaluation of the literature. This article was developed as an exemplar for how AI generated material can be used to support teaching delivery and student learning. An AI generated draft can provide opportunities for students to critique written material and improve their skills in reviewing and evaluating the published literature. Based upon this study, it is clear that, although GenAI is a useful tool in education, there are important limitations and risks that educators and learners need to be aware of.