Writing is one of the most important skills that students need to master for college level work.

Therefore, students should be prepared with these skills before moving to the college level because they

are required to write numerous papers that tend to be used for learning assessment (Fahad, 2015).

Enhancing students' academic writing skills is a concern for higher education institutions, even in

English-speaking countries. Boyle, Ramsay, and Struan (2019). At the tertiary level, students are required

to produce academic essays, which are difficult and may frustrate students. Academic writing, often

used to assess the student abilities in writing. Provided by the TESOL students, academic writing are

often critical key indicators of successful experience in postgraduate TESOL (Teaching English to

Speakers of Other Languages) programs. However, in a disciplinary course designed for postgraduate

TESOL students, students are required to write with high-level construction skills by integrating

disparate ideas, synthesizing perspectives, as well as a significant concern for accuracy, voice, and

audience (Lavelle & Bushrow, 2007). Some recent studies have investigated the challenges of academic

writing, whether from the lecturers' perspective (Singh, 2019) or undergraduate students' and lecturers’

perspectives (Mudawy & Mousa, 2017), but every research context is unique. Hence, the current study

is an attempt to explore the students’ perceptions regarding the use of AI and its effect on their

academic writing.

Many research findings show the positive effects of using technology, especially in the field of

education. Technology has a big role in building the quality of education. Fatimah and Santiana (2017)

argued that as the latest instructional media in this globalization era, technology contributes good

benefits in the educational sector, especially in teaching and learning process such as, helps the students

to have new authentic and meaningful learning experiences, provides more fun and effective learning

atmosphere to engage their effort and behavior, allows the students to work collaboratively and easily

access the information that can increase their learning experiences.

 The use of Artificial Intelligent (AI)-powered writing tools in English as a foreign language (EFL)

classroom is increasing rapidly. These tools include grammar checks, writing aids, and programs that can

create written works like essays without human help. They are easy to use and effective, saving students

and educators time and effort (T. S. Chang et al., 2021; Gayed et al., 2022; Jeanjaroonsri, 2023; Zhao,

2022). Additionally, AI writing tools have been used particularly for EFL learners with low English

proficiency. By using these tools, students can receive immediate feedback and assistance, improving

their writing skills faster. Particularly, advances in natural language processing have led to the

development of a number of AI-enabled tools (e.g., Author, 2022; Park, 2020) for the teaching and

learning of writing. Such tools could enhance students’ writing competence by arousing student interest,

encouraging motivation and engagement, providing practice opportunities, automatically assessing

writing performance, offering timely feedback, etc. AI-enabled tools in writing classrooms take on many

forms, such as automated writing evaluation, text editors supplying synchronous feedback, and

automatic text generation see (Godwin-Jones, 2022). They have been designed to provide help for

different elements in a cognitive writing process, including planning, translating, reviewing and

monitoring (Flower & Hayes, 1981). For instance, Author (2022) developed an AI chatbot named

Argumate which can scaffold students’ idea generation in planning argumentative essays by suggesting

ideas to support their position and encouraging them to consider counterclaims and incorporate

rebuttals. Furthermore, an AI-supported academic writing tool named Text Generator that uses natural

language generation (NLG), an AI that allows computer systems to generate human-comprehensible

language texts from information (Gatt & Krahmer, 2018). The computer systems that perform NLG are

called language models (Bender et al., 2021). In this way, Text Generator comprises large, open-source

language models (Biderman & Raff, 2022; Black et al., 2021; Devlin et al., 2019; Radford et al., 2019).
 In various ways, AI has the capability to promote advancement and innovation in educational

settings (Zhai, 2022). One of the emerging AI tools that can be employed for educational purposes is

ChatGPT (General Pre-trained Transformer). ChatGPT is an AI chatbot developed by an American AI

company, called OpenAI. The number of ChatGPT users has remarkably increased by over one million in

just a week after its launch on November 30, 2022 (Mollman, 2022). ChatGPT is a large language model

(LLM) with the capacity to produce suitable responses to context and engage in natural-sounding

conversation (Deng & Lin, 2022). At the present, there are three versions of ChatGPT: ChatGPT (a free

version), ChatGPT Plus (a premium version), and GPT-4 (an upgraded version) (OpenAI,n.d.). ChatGPT

enables the school staff and teachers especially the students to have a flexible way of teaching and

learning. In this sense, it is more convenient to any ChatGPT users mostly the students to ask ChatGPT to

assist them anytime in their paper works such as assignments, projects, and various written activities.

There has been burgeoning research on the impact of using AI writing tools on students’ writing ability.

While several studies indicate positive outcomes, others highlight potential negative impacts. In

educational settings, ChatGPT not only can assist in designing assignments, producing essays, and

translating languages, but it also enables users to pose and answer a variety of questions, summarize

texts, and interact with it like peers (Sok, 2023). Baidoo-Anu and Ansah (2023) claimed that such a

model could also demonstrate creativity in writing on almost any topic from a single paragraph to a full

research article that can be seen as convincing or almost convincing. Likewise, Atlas (2023) argued that

tertiary education could benefit greatly from the usage of ChatGPT and other language models, which

can be applied in a wide range of contexts, including writing aid, language acquisition, research, and

administration. Thus, it could be argued that ChatGPT has the potential to be a useful tool for education

and research. These advancements hold substantial potential in not only streamlining the writing

process but also in improving the quality and efficiency of written output.
 Despite the myriad of potential educational benefits, in its current state ChatGPT has been

found to have several serious inherent limitations, such as generating wrong answers, making-up articles

that do not exist, and unfair learning assessment. For example, an author asked ChatGPT to generate

books and articles in a paper he is working on, ChatGPT included a make-up article which does not exist

and even provided full bibliographic details of the article with a non-functional URL (Qadir, 2022). These

limitations and other glitches have been reported in other studies. For instance, AI writing tools may

inadvertently promote over-reliance among students, as they might lean too heavily on these tools for

correction without thoroughly understanding their mistakes. This dependency can stunt their natural

learning process and development of self-editing skills. Iskender (2023) provided critical perspective on

this matter, arguing that the use of AI writing tools could lead to diminished critical thinking skills if

students become overly dependent on them. They expressed concern that students might prioritize

quick fixes from AI tools over deeply understanding and learning from their mistakes, which would

essentially negate the process of learning, growth, and development in writing. Moreover, questions

and prompts generated by ChatGPT potentially encourage students’ involvement with diverse levels of

knowledge and skills, as well as stimulate their problem-solving and critical thinking skills (Kasneci et al.,

2023), which is pivotal for 21st century education. It is convinced that this emerging AI tool plays an

essential role in developing students’ ability in academic writing.