Students' reflections on their experience with ChatGPT.

Background: The emergence of Generative Artificial Intelligence has brought a number of ethical and practical issues to higher education. Solid experimental evidence is yet inadequate to set the functional rules for the new technology. Objectives: The objective of this study is to analyse the experience of undergraduate students' interaction with ChatGPT and contribute to identifying the problems arising from the widespread use of artificial intelligence. Methods: Junior university students (N = 25) were assigned the task of working on their seminar essays with the aid of ChatGPT. Most students were novices with this tool (the study was conducted in the spring of 2023). Their essays were analysed qualitatively, according to the principles of the general inductive approach. Results and Conclusions: The initial attitudes towards artificial intelligence were almost equally distributed from enthusiastic to indifferent and cautious, with one student refusing to interact with the chatbot on ideological grounds. After the first experience, most of the students declared themselves adopters of the new technology. We have found some evidence for enhancing critical thinking competence when using ChatGPT, as well as examples of unquestioned reliance on its outputs. The tendency to personification of the chatbot was apparent in the students' essays. Implications: The findings show how easily the students embrace artificial intelligence and suggest a failure of any attempts for its strict regulation. This, on the other hand, underlines the need for emphasis on personal and research‐oriented approaches in teaching and learning. Lay Description: What is currently known about this topic: Tools such as ChatGPT have spread rapidly in the university environment, but exactly how students use them is not yet well understood. What does this paper add: We analyzed students' interactions with ChatGPT and identified a few patterns such as personification and overreliance on the AI outputs. Implications for practice or policy: Changes to education introduced by AI tools emphasize the need for personal and research‐oriented approaches in teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]