Artificial intelligence (AI) has been used for quite some time for a variety of purposes, such as search engines, advertisement matching, and bioinformatics. Use of AI is now expanding rapidly, has taken recent leaps forward with generative and creative tools, and is expected to have major transformative effects on research and society (Suleyman & Bhaskar, 2023). Application of AI can be expected to support and improve research in many ways, but it also raises ethical issues, as noted in recent guidelines on responsible use of AI: “Research is one of the sectors that could be most significantly disrupted by generative AI” (European Commission, 2024, p. 3). The ambition of this paper is to provide an overview of ethical issues relating to use of AI in research.

After some brief notes on ethics and artificial intelligence, to broadly position the paper, I will first discuss ethical issues relating to the use of text-generating AI, in particular plagiarism. Thereafter I move on to the pros and cons of using AI in the research process (rather than in the production of manuscripts). I particularly bring up risk of bias, lack of transparency, issues relating to data handling, and potential loss of control over research.