ChatGPT: ethical concerns and challenges in academics and research

Introduction: The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) has presented several opportunities to ease human work. AI applications are available for almost every domain of life. A new technology, Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT), was introduced by OpenAI in November 2022, and has become a topic of discussion across the world. ChatGPT-3 has brought many opportunities, as well as ethical and privacy considerations. ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM) which has been trained on the events that happened until 2021. The use of AI and its assisted technologies in scientific writing is against research and publication ethics. Therefore, policies and guidelines need to be developed over the use of such tools in scientific writing. The main objective of the present study was to highlight the use of AI and AI assisted technologies such as the ChatGPT and other chatbots in the scientific writing and in the research domain resulting in bias, spread of inaccurate information and plagiarism. Methodology: Experiments were designed to test the accuracy of ChatGPT when used in research and academic writing. Results: The information provided by ChatGPT was inaccurate and may have far-reaching implications in the field of medical science and engineering. Critical thinking should be encouraged among researchers to raise awareness about the associated privacy and ethical risks. Conclusions: Regulations for ethical and privacy concerns related to the use of ChatGPT in academics and research need to be developed.