Ethical Boundaries in GenAI-Driven Research: Language Researchers’ Reactions to Unethical Use of GenAI in Graduate Education

The rapid integration of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools into academic settings, particularly graduate education, where research integrity is required, has raised questions about their ethical use. Adopting a scenario-based qualitative design, this study focuses on exploring language researchers’ perspectives on and reactions to potentially unethical GenAI practices in graduate research with an extended technology acceptance (E-TAM) perspective and thus providing a process-oriented framework including preventive strategies for the unethical uses of GenAI in graduate research. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 10 language researchers from different universities, focusing on hypothetical scenarios, and were analyzed thematically. The findings revealed that participants mostly conceptualized GenAI uses presented in scenarios as ethically suspect. However, they pointed out that they might tolerate the use of GenAI in data analysis and consider it ethically contingent, provided that transparency, responsibility, and accountability are ensured. Language researchers also proposed preventive strategies to avoid unethical uses of GenAI in academic contexts, and a framework was developed based on these suggestions. This framework, suggesting that ethical GenAI use in graduate research practices is a shared responsibility of graduate students, their supervisors and institutions, can be used as a guide to promote ethical GenAI use in graduate education. This study contributes a theoretically informed and empirically grounded framework for promoting ethical GenAI use in graduate research by integrating language researchers’ insights with an E-TAM perspective through a scenario-based approach that reveals context-dependent ethical reasoning. © 2026 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.