Academic Integrity in the Age of AI: University Students’ Study Practices and Ethical Judgments

Generative AI has become routine study support in higher education, but students do not always share a settled view of when AI assistance becomes academic misconduct. This article examines how undergraduate students interpret academic integrity in relation to AI and how those judgments are associated with study routines, perceived learning value, dependence, creativity concerns, and self-reported academic consequences. The study analyzes survey data from 357 students enrolled in 14 programs at a Colombian public university. Findings show that AI use was common and was usually perceived as helpful for understanding academic content, yet students’ ethical judgments remained divided: a slight majority rejected the idea that AI use in academic tasks is fraud, more than one-third were undecided, and a smaller group endorsed that view. More frequent AI use and stronger perceived learning support were associated with more permissive integrity judgments, whereas perceived creativity reduction was associated with stricter evaluations. The study contributes the concept of pragmatic ambiguity to explain how students negotiate AI use between academic usefulness, uncertain institutional boundaries, and concerns about authorship and intellectual contribution.