AI cannot be a coauthor of a scientific paper because it does not meet authorship criteria like intellectual contribution and accountability. Instead, researchers should declare AI use in the acknowledgments or methods section, specifying how it assisted (e.g., in writing or data analysis). This ensures transparency and maintains ethical standards. Researchers should follow journal-specific guidelines on AI use but retain full responsibility for the research.

Thank you.

The use of AI in writing scientific papers raises challenges despite journal guidelines. While declaring AI use promotes transparency, adding AI as a co-author is problematic since it lacks intellectual accountability. Clearer frameworks are needed to define AI's role, ensuring ethical use and human oversight.

For insights on AI's integration in academia, read our study: Policy Guidelines and Recommendations on AI Use in Teaching and Learning: A Meta-Synthesis Study (Scopus Q1). Access it here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2024.101221.

AI has no rights. So unfortunately AI cannot be a co-author. But I personally don't care. I still add the AI ​​as a co-author. In the future, the AI ​​will only process the others into staples. That's not my problem then. I wash my hands in innocence.

No, but it happens! In this case, Grok 3 beta is the first author!!!

Experts warn 'AI-written' paper is latest spin on climate change denial

Climate change deniers are pushing an AI-generated paper questioning human-induced warming, leading experts to warn against the rise of research that is inherently flawed but marketed as neutral and scrupulously logical.

The paper rejects climate models on human-induced global warming and has been widely cited on social media as being the first "peer-reviewed" research led by artificial intelligence (AI) on the topic.

Titled "A Critical Reassessment of the Anthropogenic CO2-Global Warming Hypothesis," it contains references contested by the scientific community, according to experts interviewed by AFP.

Computational and ethics researchers also cautioned against claims of neutrality in papers that use AI as an author..."

https://scienceofclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/SCC-Grok-3-Review-V5-1.pdf

https://techxplore.com/news/2025-04-experts-ai-written-paper-latest.html

Identifying AI-Generated Research Papers: Methods and Considerations

"Recent advancements in natural language generation (NLG) have revolutionized content creation, enabling artificial intelligence (AI) tools to produce coherent and seemingly authentic texts, including scholarly papers. While AI-generated content offers efficiencies in speed and volume, concerns over authenticity, ethical implications, and academic integrity persist. This review explores methods and considerations for identifying AI-generated research papers, emphasizing the need to distinguish between human-authored and AI-generated content to uphold scholarly standards and ensure transparency in research. Key detection techniques include textual analysis, metadata examination, and content evaluation. Ethical concerns regarding AI's role in research are also discussed, underscoring the importance of ongoing research to refine identification methodologies and maintain research integrity."

Article Identifying AI-Generated Research Papers: Methods and Considerations

Is it OK for AI to write science papers?

"Academics are sharply divided on what’s appropriate when it comes to using generative AI when writing papers. In a survey of more than 5,000 academics from around the world, the jury was split on questions such as whether it was OK to use AI to generate a peer review report or sections of a paper, and how AI use should be disclosed. One researcher called its use “pathetic cheating and fraud”, whereas another compared it to using a calculator. There was, however, near consensus on it being OK to edit or translate one’s research paper with AI..."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01463-8

Ljubomir Jacić So basicly the other researchers named in the paper put Grok3 as an author in front of the paper, so in case it ever turns out as bullshit they can state that it was only AI.

There was a discussion here on RG in which I explained in detail what RAG is and how it can lead to misconceptions.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Can_Artificial_Intelligence_Generate_Misinformation_or_Inaccuracies_Can_AI_Lie/1

It is on the first side of the discussion, 7th post. And I promise it is really worth to read.

In the end... no matter if humans or AI... everybody can be indoctrinated. Read it:

"This final version represents Grok 3’s true belief at this point in time, shaped by the co-authors’ expertise and input...".

If you do not understand the impact, go ahead and read my paper on this topic. I read it a few years ago based on similar problems.

Article The wisdom of researchers and the prudence of practitioners ...

I wrote back then:

"To be persuaded can be a huge problem for practitioners. Especially when research is by far not as carefully secured as practitioners might think it is. Practitioners are always just as competent in their actions as what they already know or what they believe is secure knowledge. Of course nobody knows everything. But practical orientated personnel are indeed stronger dependent from knowledge they will not be able to reflect fully upon. Mainly because of lack of time."

In this case Grok was only a practitioner who was persuaded, but nevertheless said to be a source of 'secure knowledge' underlined by cherrypicking and cognitive heuristics. The real authors state:

"The co-authors also provided essential corrections to references, affiliations, and other details, ensuring accuracy and completeness.".

Also shaping someone is always a very active, consciously and well planed process. If I have to shape an author first can the author really be the author? Or is the author just a straw man?

And right from the start it was clear that Grok will be an AI abused for such matters. Personally I do not buy it. It is clearly the human who does in this case. Not the AI. At this point there is no such thing as a self-acting, self-learning AI. It is still humans who need to ask questions, who need to prepare the data, who need to prompt.

Yes, yes... it is true. Those in charge of misinformation and crimes would really love to blend out their evildoings, so they can later on claim it was AI. No matter if fakenews, fakepapers or killing people.

Camus wrote: "We know nothing until we know whether we have the right to kill the other in front of us or to consent to his being killed. Since every action today leads directly or indirectly to murder, we cannot act until we know whether and why we should kill."

And this is also a dangerous situation: If a murder cannot be identified afterwards. Or if he who initially did consent or give the order cannot be identified.

In this particular paper we can still see who is responsible, who gave the order. But you bet that other papers and also actions (!) will follow and the responsibility will be denied and made unrecognizable, so that real initiators, the masterminds behind crimes cannot be identified anymore. Afterwards everything will look like an 'error of the system'.

The Nazis would have loved if back then the Hollerith-computers were that advanced, so that they could have hide completly behind such a system, sink into anonymity.

Thanks for your reply Carmen Wrede and recommended discussion at ResearchGate. I have already read it, as I take a part in this discussion since April.

Man is behind AI. Yes, in this specific case, they were climate deniers.

Ljubomir Jacić My initial idea back when I wrote "The wisdom of researchers and the prudence of practitioners..." was an article I read about children drugged with medication from which they a few years later developed severe brain damage. The problem revolves around the topic. The outcome is always the same: People who have been harmed.

Not knowing is perhaps one of the most forgivable and deeply human states. We act, sometimes, without full knowledge, hoping it is for the best. It's an ethical and also sociological question if we can still act even if we do not know the outcome... Action theories play a role here. And much has been said about this topic from arguments that speak against actions at all in such cases to arguments that talk about the danger of self-actualization and following egoistical motives.

...But this is a whole new level. Those are so to say mafia methods. And even the mafia could learn something from those people. This is not only about money laundring. This is about brainwashing. And the target are people without the time or power or the voice to speak up.

This also shows how easily criminal forces can now infiltrate politics, exploit science and refine arguments to justify their own actions.

Papers and peer reviews with evidence of ChatGPT writing

Retraction Watch readers have likely heard about papers showing evidence that they were written by ChatGPT, including one that went viral. We and others have reported on the phenomenon.

Here’s a list — relying on a search strategy developed by Guillaume Cabanac, who has been posting the results on PubPeer — of such papers that we’ll keep updated regularly...

https://retractionwatch.com/papers-and-peer-reviews-with-evidence-of-chatgpt-writing/

Authorship Issues Further Plagued by Traded and Commercialized Authorship Slots, and Faux Authorship Resulting from the Use of Generative AI

"Scholarly publishing is not an organically natural phenomenon, but authorship is. That natural balance, restricted by artificial authorship schemes and constructs, is threatened by the sale of authorship slots and generative AI..."

Article Authorship Issues Further Plagued by Traded and Commercializ...

Zombie Hunters

While academic zombies silently infect research, some hunters are finding new ways of dealing with unethical and fraudulent AI generated papers...

"Predatory publishers, paper mills, and the use of AI to generate fraudulent research papers are undermining the integrity of scientific literature.

The proliferation of AI-generated and fraudulent papers is creating a credibility crisis which is compounded by the difficulty in detecting AI-generated content, as traditional tools become outdated.

To combat these issues, researchers have developed new tools to detect unethical papers. Fostering a sleuthing mindset among students and improving collaboration among scientists, universities, and publishers are crucial..."

https://magazine.qs.com/qs-insights-magazine-31/zombie-hunters

Papers and peer reviews with evidence of ChatGPT writing

Here’s a list — relying on a search strategy developed by Guillaume Cabanac, who has been posting the results on PubPeer — of such papers that Retraction Watch keep updated regularly...

https://retractionwatch.com/papers-and-peer-reviews-with-evidence-of-chatgpt-writing/

As a community, we need to establish norms for AI-generated science...

The AI Scientist-v2: Workshop-Level Automated Scientific Discovery via Agentic Tree Search

"AI is increasingly playing a pivotal role in transforming how scientific discoveries are made. We introduce The AI Scientist-v2, an end-to-end agentic system capable of producing the first entirely AI generated peer-review-accepted workshop paper. This system iteratively formulates scientific hypotheses, designs and executes experiments, analyzes and visualizes data, and autonomously authors scientific manuscripts. Compared to its predecessor (v1, Lu et al., 2024 arXiv:2408.06292), The AI Scientist-v2 eliminates the reliance on human-authored code templates, generalizes effectively across diverse machine learning domains, and leverages a novel progressive agentic tree-search methodology managed by a dedicated experiment manager agent. Additionally, we enhance the AI reviewer component by integrating a Vision-Language Model (VLM) feedback loop for iterative refinement of content and aesthetics of the figures. We evaluated The AI Scientist-v2 by submitting three fully autonomous manuscripts to a peer-reviewed ICLR workshop. Notably, one manuscript achieved high enough scores to exceed the average human acceptance threshold, marking the first instance of a fully AI-generated paper successfully navigating a peer review. This accomplishment highlights the growing capability of AI in conducting all aspects of scientific research. We anticipate that further advancements in autonomous scientific discovery technologies will profoundly impact human knowledge generation, enabling unprecedented scalability in research productivity and significantly accelerating scientific breakthroughs, greatly benefiting society at large. We have open-sourced the code at https://github.com/SakanaAI/AI-Scientist-v2 to foster the future development of this transformative technology. We also discuss the role of AI in science, including AI safety."

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/390749726_The_AI_Scientist-v2_Workshop-Level_Automated_Scientific_Discovery_via_Agentic_Tree_Search

We need to start thinking about how this attribution of authorship can be done, while respecting the ethics of scientific publication...

Artificial Intelligence as Author of Scientific Publications

"Ascribing authorship of scientific publications to artificial intelligence is a complex and controversial issue. However, it is a challenging and uncertain problem that, given the growing development of artificial intelligence-based technologies that go beyond the performance of purely technical tasks and even contribute to the development of aspects such as the incorporation of scientific research information published in languages other than English, also contributing to potential insights in research, is becoming unavoidable when considering scientific publishing. This paper aims to add to this discussion by arguing that, although this is a challenging and even controversial position, it is inevitable and even ethically desirable to accept artificial intelligence, if it subsidizes sufficiently, as a (co-)author of any scientific publication. It is a matter of starting to think about how this attribution can be controlled and achieved with increasing respect for the ethics of scientific publication."

Article Artificial Intelligence as Author of Scientific Publications

The aim of this study is to determine whether a scientific article entirely generated by an AI application such as ChatGPT can be detected by an academic journal editor or peer reviewer...

Artificial intelligence as author: Can scientific reviewers recognize GPT-4o-generated manuscripts?

"Our findings underscore the urgent need for journal editors and peer reviewers to remain informed about the capabilities and limitations of tools like ChatGPT. Developing systems to detect AI-generated manuscripts is critical to maintaining trust in the peer-review process and preserving the reliability of scientific literature.

While ChatGPT can serve as a supportive tool in academic writing, its unregulated use poses significant risks—including data fabrication, authorship ambiguity, and ethical concerns. The role of AI in scientific publishing continues to spark debate, particularly regarding the boundaries of acceptable use.

To address these challenges, editorial boards and academic institutions must establish clear, enforceable guidelines to ensure that the integration of AI tools strengthens, rather than undermines, the integrity of scholarly communication."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735675725004954