An exploration of students’ perceptions of artificial intelligence and plagiarism at a higher education institution

With the high incidence of students’ use of artificial intelligence (AI) content-generated tools, issues in academic integrity abound. Artificial intelligence and plagiarism have emerged as the main threats to using content-generated AI tools in the scholarly literature. This study proposes to answer the following research questions: What are Master’s students’ views of the use of content-generated tools? Why do Master's students use content-generated tools? This qualitative descriptive phenomenological single case study contains interviews with nine Guyanese Master’s students completing their theses about their use and experiences using content-generated AI tools and their views on AI and plagiarism. These students were chosen based on non-probability purposive sampling. The researcher implemented six steps in qualitative data analysis. In vivo, descriptive, and evaluative coding were implemented with semantic and latent meanings considered. Deontology, utilitarianism, rational self-interest, and cultural relativism were linked to three components of the Theory of Planned Behavior when deductive coding was implemented. This study can inform policy development and implementation on AI and plagiarism.