The UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) has released a new guide titled 'Embracing AI with Integrity: A Practical Guide for Researchers' to help researchers and lab managers integrate AI responsibly into their work.

The guide highlights five key risk areas in AI research: legal and compliance breaches, ethical issues, safeguarding research records, responsible dissemination, and the impact on researchers' creativity and critical thinking.

It emphasizes the importance of balancing AI's potential to foster creativity with the need to mitigate risks that could diminish researchers' critical thinking skills.

Following a 2024 survey, UKRIO identified a strong demand for practical support on AI in research, noting that AI adoption is outpacing the development of institutional guidelines.

Ethical concerns include biases in AI models, which can compromise research integrity, and environmental impacts due to the energy-intensive nature of AI technologies.

AI's role in research dissemination is complex; while it can enhance communication, inaccuracies and lack of transparency in AI outputs can lead to misconduct allegations, underscoring the need for transparency about AI use in publications.

UKRIO encourages researchers to use the guide for self-assessment and urges lab managers to incorporate its recommendations into their AI policies and training programs.

The guide also warns about compliance risks such as breaches of confidentiality, data protection, and copyright, which could threaten a lab's legal standing and funding.