Exploring Libyan PhD Students' Awareness and Use (AI) Based Conversational Agents and Speech Technologies to Improve Academic Writing

Academic writing is a key skill for doctoral students, which at the same time presents great challenges particularly to those for which English is a foreign language. The rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the form of conversational agents and speech based writing assistants brings forth new chances to help students overcome these issues. This study looks at Libyan PhD students' awareness of patterns of use of and thoughts on AI tools, which include ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot in the area of academic writing. The current study used a mixed methods approach, which included a questionnaire of both closed and open ended questions to determine participants' familiarization with these technologies, how and how often they use them, what they think of their performance and also what problems they face. The study found that although awareness of AI writing tools relatively high among Libyan PhD students, actual usage remains limited. Keywords: Academic writing Libyan PhD students Artificial Intelligence Conversational Agents Writing Assistants ChatGPT.