AI tools are beneficial but must be used ethically and transparently, ensuring the work remains a true representation of the researcher’s knowledge and analysis.

• Enhanced Writing Support: AI tools boost efficiency in academic writing by aiding research synthesis, drafting, and refining language. However, they should assist, not replace, the scholar’s intellectual effort.
• Ethical Dilemma: The ethical debate centers on the extent of AI use. While enhancing clarity and reducing errors is fair, overreliance risks undermining academic integrity and authentic authorship.
• Intellectual Integrity: Even if AI content is unduplicated, the key issue is whether the work genuinely reflects the author’s critical understanding, as AI-generated text may not capture true scholarly depth.
• Plagiarism Concerns: AI tools may unintentionally introduce uncredited ideas, leading to ethical breaches even when the text is technically original.
• Rigor and Depth: Academic writing demands deep analysis and critical insight, which AI cannot replicate. AI-generated content may lack nuanced arguments and comprehensive understanding.
• Transparency: Ethical use requires clear acknowledgment of AI assistance to maintain trust and allow proper evaluation of a scholar's contribution.

The use of AI tools makes academic writing efficient but it is important to be original, reference your sources, and follow the ethical guidelines.

Do we really need AI tools for Academic writing? It would be herculean task to navigate all the checkpoints as completely listed by Mr. Pal above, to make sure that the originality and the other concerns regarding the same are not viciated.

So why to overcomplicate things?

Anu Sasidharan While it's true that maintaining originality and addressing ethical concerns can be challenging, isn't the core purpose of AI tools to simplify tasks like grammar checking, generating ideas, and improving clarity, rather than replace genuine academic effort? Could their judicious use not enhance the writing process rather than complicate it?

I completely agree with Grammar Checking and also to improve the Clarity. I am not very sure about 'Generating Ideas'. It's a thin line where their use can spill over onto the 'Originality' aspect of the Academic Writing.

When we give suggestions to the AI to reduce the length of a concept which we have typed as a long sentence, the AI does a beautiful work by simplifying the sentence maybe to it's half, but they can generate new ideas in this process. Such a process is done repeatedly until we get the right form of a shortened version of a sentence or long concept - but in this process the AI generates a lot of suggestions. Will this for example contaminate the 'Originality' aspect of the work?

Anu Sasidharan You raise an excellent point about the potential overlap between AI suggestions and originality. However, could it not be argued that when we actively guide the AI —editing, selecting, and refining its suggestions— we maintain intellectual ownership of the final output? Perhaps the key lies in transparency: clearly acknowledging how and where AI tools have contributed to the writing process. Would this approach address concerns about originality while still benefiting from the strengths of AI?

Yes, it does. The way you have said it sure works. However, when we are going on repeatedly giving larger potions of texts or material into the AI to churn out meaningful and shorter sentences or to give us different ways in which this content taken from another source to be interpreted, then one is it tales a lot of time until finally the AI brings out the context in the way how it would be aligning with the current situation in the paper we are writing at the moment; as an example to quote here. It takes a lot of time over here for the AI to churn out the right context as the AI doesn't know all of a sudden as to what we are looking for because we are actually preparing the paper. Moreover we have to keep on giving suggestions. What if we ourselves do this part by just reducing the concepts in our mind (after reading the reference source) and enter the same into the paper we are working on? This is one.

Secondly we have now an additional responsibility to exactly acknowledge the realms and circumstances where the AI has contributed and also to what extent requires to be mentioned.

And on top of it we have the other things that also needs to be double checked such as plagiarism and ethical conundrums.

Are we just complicating? Are we doing double the work now? Are we forced to take things in a longer manner because we have to incorporate AI? Is the AI making us do a lot more which otherwise we would not be doing?

These are just my thoughts or suggestions. I am not being offensive or defensive.