Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots have emerged as a growing resource in educational settings. This expansion has occurred amid varying acceptance and trust in digital learning technologies across student populations, with most reporting that their instructors or schools had not yet provided guidelines for ethical or responsible AI tool use.  

    Benefits of AI chatbots in educational settings extend to both students and educators. These systems can support learning by providing detailed explanations of concepts through intelligent tutoring support. Beyond explanations, they can offer immediate feedback on students’ work, allowing for more rapid improvement and iterative learning. These systems have demonstrated their potential to support personalized learning, adapting to individual student needs. Personalization naturally fosters higher levels of student engagement, found to be another benefit of these systems. Studies have also highlighted AI’s potential to stimulate creativity through idea generation, bridge language barriers via content translation for multilingual learners, and democratize education by providing continuous access to educational support and resources regardless of time or geographical constraints. 

    Besides their promise, implementing AI chatbots in educational settings requires careful consideration of several risks. For students, academic integrity has been raised as a primary concern, with studies highlighting the risks of intentional and unintentional plagiarism. These tools may inadvertently undermine students’ critical thinking development and academic agency, potentially fostering an unhealthy overreliance on automated assistance. The quality of interaction itself presents additional challenges, as the reduction of peer-to-peer and student-instructor interactions threatens to eliminate meaningful learning relationships.