AI is reshaping how research is conceived, conducted, and communicated across fields from chemistry to biomedicine. This commentary examines how AI is transforming the research workflow. AI systems now help researchers manage the information deluge, filtering the literature, surfacing cross-disciplinary links for ideas and collaborations, generating hypotheses, and designing and executing experiments. These developments mark a shift from AI as a mere computational tool to AI as an active collaborator in science. Yet this transformation demands thoughtful integration and governance. In this opinion paper, we argue that at this time AI must augment but not replace human judgment in academic workflows such as peer review, ethical evaluation, and validation of results. This article calls for the deliberate adoption of AI within the scientific practice through policies that promote transparency, reproducibility, and accountability.
Eren et al. (2026) studied this question.