HEALTH LITERACY ON CHATGPT: EXPLORING THE POTENTIAL OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE USE IN ACADEMIC WRITING

Abstract

The study aimed to identify and analyze the constitutive components of texts generated by ChatGPT to consultations on an emerging topic in the Portuguese language academic literature – literacia em saúde (health literacy) - as well as discussing how such evidence can contribute to a better understanding of the limits and the challenges regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in academic writing. This is a descriptive, exploratory study based on ChatGPT consultations from five firing questions, made in sequence, in Portuguese and English, with increasing levels of linguistic complexity. The analysis of the results showed a wide perspective for the use of AI technologies, such as ChatGPT, a largely available and unrestricted tool, with an intuitive and simple interface that could generate coherent, structured texts in natural language. Considering the phenomenon of academic productivism, associated with a growing tendency of professional misconduct, especially plagiarism, there is a need for an even more careful look at the process of academic writing and scientific knowledge dissemination, particularly when mediated by AI technologies.