PERSPECTIVES
J Oral Maxillofac Surg
Can We Write a Research Paper Using
Artificial Intelligence?
Chandan S. Narayanaswamy, MDS, PhD
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a rapidly developing field
that has the potential to revolutionize many aspects
of human life. The process of writing a research paper
is a technical exercise for students and researchers that
requires logical organization of a large amount of data
and formatting. The development of AI and natural lan-
guage processing (NLP) has led to the creation of new
tools that can assist with this process. One such tool is
ChatGPT (developed by OpenAI, Inc, California), a
large language model that can generate human-like
text based on a given prompt.1
Intrigued at this new tool, I asked ChatGPT (devel-
oped by OpenAI, Inc., California) to write a research
paper on the topic ‘ Future trends in oral and maxillofa-
cial surgery’’ (Fig 1). It not only wrote a short original
paper on said topic, but also gave completely different
versions on several repeat searches and sometimes
even with references. When cross-checked for plagia-
rism using Turnitin software (Turnitin LLC,
California), it came back with 11% similarity.
The purpose of this discussion is to explore the ben-
efits, limitations, and considerations when using AI
and NLPs to draft a research paper.
AI can benefit a researcher by providing unique per-
spectives through the instantaneous gathering of infor-
mation from the enormous dataset with which they
are fed.2 Large language models have the ability to
generate a massive amount of coherent and grammat-
ically correct text. These NLPs are trained on a large
dataset of human-generated text, allowing them to
mimic human writing style and language patterns.3
This gives AI and NLPs the ability to generate para-
graphs or even entire sections of a research paper
within seconds that are difficult to distinguish from
text written by a human. This is both fascinating and
Reader, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, JSS Dental
College, JSS Academy of Higher Education and Research, Mysore,
India.
Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None of the authors have any
relevant financial relationship(s) with a commercial interest.
Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr Narayanasw-
amy: Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, JSS Dental Col-
524
81:524-526, 2023
scary. This can save researchers and students a signifi-
cant amount of time when writing a research paper
and also makes the peer review process easier.
However, NLPs are still machines and not a human,
thus they may not be able to fully understand the nu-
ances and complexities of a research topic. AI-based
models may miss the context and totally misrepresent
an entire section of a paper or even create completely
made-up research with imaginary study subjects and
statistics. This will lead to a rise in the number of falsi-
fied research studies which, in turn, will lead to an
editorial nightmare. There are a few counterbalancing
AI detector tools available that can check if the written
text is human-generated or AI-generated.4 However,
there are also online paraphrasing tools available to
circumvent this detection.5
There are 3 main considerations for the use of AI-
based tools in writing research papers: ethical/
moral, critical/rational, and originality. Potential
bias and lack of transparency regarding the use of
these tools raises ethical concerns. A possible solu-
tion to this may be an acknowledgment of the use
of these tools by the authors.2 It is important to
keep in mind that these are still tools and not a
replacement for critical thinking and rational anal-
ysis that is required for a research paper. Finally,
there is the question of originality, like the Ship of
Theseus conundrum, what part of a research paper
is original if most parts of it have been generated
with the assistance of an AI?
Acknowledgments
The author wants to acknowledge the contribution of OpenAI,
Inc, Quillbot, Inc, and Grammarly, Inc in preparing this
manuscript.
lege, JSS Academy of Higher Education and Research, SS Nagar,
Mysore, India 570015; e-mail: dr.chandansn@jssuni.edu.in
Received January 11 2023
Accepted January 12 2023
Ó 2023 American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons
0278-2391/23/00096-4
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joms.2023.01.011
CHANDAN S. NARAYANASWAMY 525

FIGURE 1. The paper produced by ChatGPT (developed by OpenAI, Inc, California) toward the prompt—write a research paper on the topic
‘‘Future trends in oral and maxillofacial surgery.’’
Chandan S. Narayanaswamy. Can We Write a Research Paper Using AI? J Oral Maxillofac Surg 2023.
526
References
1. ChatGPT OpenAI. 2023. Available at: https://openai.com/blog/
chatgpt/. Accessed January 12, 2023
2. ChatGPT Generative Pre-trained Transformer; Zhavoronkov A.
Rapamycin in the context of Pascal’s Wager: Generative
pre-trained transformer perspective. Oncoscience 9:82–84,
2022. https://doi.org/10.18632/oncoscience.571
CAN WE WRITE A RESEARCH PAPER USING AI?
3. Brown T, Mann B, Ryder N, et al. language models are few-Shot
Learners. Nature 586:557–561, 2020
4. Writer. 2023. Available at: https://writer.com/ai-content-detector/.
Accessed January 12, 2023
5. Quillbot. 2023. Available at: https://quillbot.com. Accessed
January 12, 2023