How to Deal with AI-Powered Writing Tools in Academic Writing: A Stakeholder Analysis

Due to the advances of artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing, new AI-powered writing tools have emerged. They can be used by students among other things for text translation, to improve spelling or to generate new texts. In academic writing, AI-powered writing tools are posing challenges but also opportunities for teaching and learning. It is an open question in which way to sensibly deal with these tools. To address the issue, this paper investigates, what interests different stakeholders (students, lecturers, university administration) pursue in relation to AI-powered writing tools. Building on this, tensions between different stakeholders are identified and (teaching) strategies proposed to deal with these tensions. To discuss the findings in light of recent developments around ChatGPT, semi-structured expert interviews were conducted in April 2023 with five academic writing lecturers at the University of St.Gallen. The results suggest that as writing tools become more and more powerful, the need for strategies to ensure their reasonable and transparent use also increases.