The promising and problematic potential of generative AI as a leveler of the publishing playing field

Abstract This perspective paper considers the affordances and challenges of generative AI for linguaculturally diverse scholars in a still English-dominant academic publishing world. Chief among the questions examined is whether AI offers a viable path forward toward greater research publication equity but, at the same time, something much more fraught. In other words, the paper explores how promising the apparent equalizing potential of generative AI may be. Might, for example, generative AI offer a smoother path to visibility, but in so doing, actually make the uniqueness of diverse scholars’ contributions far less visible? The paradoxical potential of generative AI is discussed first in this paper by surveying, at this particular phase of AI development, some of the salient advantages of generative AI use for research prewriting, writing, and post-writing, that is, AI’s ability to assist with such essentials as idea generation, text development, and text refinement. The apparent democratizing advantages of AI for each of these major stages of research writing are then interrogated and problematized. The paper concludes with a brief speculative path forward.