Cross-sectional survey links informal AI exposure with ethical awareness among Khartoum medical students

A 2025 cross-sectional survey found that University of Khartoum medical students had moderate ethical awareness of artificial intelligence, with stronger results for privacy and data protection than for transparency and fairness or non-discrimination. The study surveyed 349 students in Years 3–6 at the Faculty of Medicine and used a 32-item Artificial Intelligence Ethical Awareness and Academic Integrity Scale. The reported median total score was 4.16, classified as moderate based on empirical tertiles derived from the survey sample.

Participants were predominantly female (69.3%) and had a mean age of 22.85 years. Privacy and data protection had the highest subdomain median score, at 4.67, while transparency and fairness/non-discrimination had the lowest, at 3.80. The abstract reports no differences in awareness by year of study. Female students had higher awareness scores than male students (P = .01). These findings describe associations within the survey population and do not establish that gender caused the difference in scores.

The study used an institutional, cross-sectional descriptive design with convenience sampling and quota allocation. The questionnaire included demographic variables, measures of artificial intelligence exposure and information about tool use. Formal exposure was limited for many respondents: 63.9% reported minimal formal exposure, while 51.6% reported moderate-to-high informal exposure. Informal exposure was positively correlated with awareness (P = .01), whereas formal exposure was not. The cross-sectional design cannot determine the temporal order of exposure and awareness or show that either exposure type caused greater awareness.

ChatGPT use was reported by 94.6% of participants. The abstract does not provide comparative prevalence figures for the other tools, so it does not establish that ChatGPT was the most widely used among them. Use of Google Gemini or Notebook LM was associated with higher awareness scores (P = .003). In a multiple regression, gender, informal exposure and tool use together accounted for 11.2% of the variance in awareness. The authors characterized the overall pattern as moderate-to-high aggregate awareness, while identifying gaps in transparency and fairness. The limited explanatory value of the model and the sample-derived tertiles constrain interpretation of the score categories.

Because the survey included one medical faculty and relied on a convenience sample, the results may not represent all medical students or other institutions. The findings provide a single-institution snapshot of AI exposure, tool use and ethical awareness in 2025, rather than a longitudinal account of learning during medical training. The study’s authors called for institutional AI ethics policies and longitudinal research to track how awareness evolves. The supplied article is an early peer-reviewed version that remains subject to further editorial changes before the final version of record.

Subject of Research: AI ethical awareness and academic integrity among University of Khartoum medical students

Article Title: Artificial intelligence ethical awareness and academic integrity among medical students at the University of Khartoum: a cross-sectional study

Article References: Muhalil, A. S. G., Alfaki, A. A. B. A., Ali, A. A. B., Alslawy, Y. M. A., Albashir, A. A. A., Abdelgadir, A. M. H., Ahmed, A. E. S., Abdalgader, H. A. S., Abdallah, R. M. A.-E., & Mohamed, Y. A. A. (2026). Artificial intelligence ethical awareness and academic integrity among medical students at the University of Khartoum: a cross-sectional study. BMC Medical Education. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-026-10617-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12909-026-10617-9

Keywords: artificial intelligence ethics, medical students, academic integrity, cross-sectional survey, AI exposure, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Notebook LM, data privacy, transparency, fairness, Artificial