Today, many artificial intelligence (AI) tools that can be used for various academic or creative purposes are easily available. Some examples include OpenAI’s GPT, Google’s Bard, and Meta’s Llama. These tools can edit, format, correct, and create content as needed by the user. Generative AI can also create text, images, other forms of media, and synthetic data. This article discusses the use of AI in the field of academic writing.

Misinformation through AI “hallucinations”

An AI language model contains a knowledge base and a language base. When the model has a knowledge gap, it can try to fill that gap on its own. It does not fully understand how one thing relates to something else but creates a connection between the two despite this lack of knowledge. This could potentially lead to what are called “hallucinations” —creation of false information without the AI tool intending to do so. Such occurrences need to be fact-checked by humans when engaging with the AI’s knowledge base. As a result, some people recommend not using the AI’s knowledge base in academic writing. Instead, they suggest utilizing just its language base.