Abstract
Artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education has become more prevalent to both students and academics with the increased availability and access to AI tools, enabling more frequent and diverse use. These tools can enhance student learning by simply entering a prompt. However, students’ increased use of AI has been causing increasing concern in higher education institutions. Questions are being raised on the ethical use of AI, especially about academic integrity and assessment of student learning. The discourse on these three concepts—AI, academic integrity, and assessment—is primarily based on ideas related to honesty, fairness, intellectual property, and plagiarism, which are pivotal to various stakeholders in higher education. Understanding how students utilise AI in their studies is essential for ensuring that they do so responsibly and ethically and for shaping guidelines for best practice and policy. Moreover, explicitly focusing on the student voice can be essential, as it advocates for students to be involved in discussions that may impact their learning. To that end, this study critically examines students’ perceptions of their ethical usage of AI by understanding the AI tools they use, their frequency of use, and whether they believe they know how to use AI ethically. Most students used AI tools to support their learning through help with assessment preparation, and their understanding of the ethical use of AI was underpinned mainly by their understanding of avoiding plagiarism.