Using AI Tools to Enhance Academic Writing and Maintain Academic Integrity

AI tools have become an important part of our professional lives, whether on the business level or the academic level. They play a crucial role for students and teachers. This has created the need to explore undergraduate students' perceptions of such tools, as there is a need to know how and why students use these tools. Those perceptions should be considered when applying adaptations to the curriculum, aiming to ensure a constructive environment where students benefit from these tools and learn simultaneously. So, the focus of this study was to explore reasons and ways why multicultural students use paraphrasing and AI tools, as well as their opinions about plagiarism and academic writing. Two focus groups participated in the study, each comprising five undergraduate students whose first language was not English. Students were from different countries and backgrounds, and they also spoke different first languages. The focus groups aimed to explore undergraduate students' perceptions of plagiarism, academic writing, and the use of AI tools in Higher Education. The collected data was analysed using qualitative methods. Finally, recommendations for future research were presented.