Behind the Scenes: A Critical Perspective on GenAI and Open Educational Practices

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a rapidly evolving field that is influencing every aspect of life. Generative AI (GenAI) as a sub-branch of AI is used to create content in various formats such as text, images, video, and audio. This paper discusses the implications of GenAI for Open Educational Practices (OEP), highlighting the potential affordances and challenges. GenAI can address the challenges within the OEP by leveraging openness and ethical use. GenAI’s “generative” nature and human-like language capability can provide resources such as course material, activities, examples, questions, assessment, and learning outcomes in the context of OEP. With machine learning and deep learning infrastructure, it can support the discoverability and accessibility of open resources by increasing the metadata quality. GenAI can automatically score student assignments, answer their questions, and provide instant feedback to address the lack of interaction and feedback that arises due to the large number of students, especially in massive open online courses (MOOC). On the other hand, GenAI brings challenges such as data privacy and security, copyright, biased outputs, and the generation of false information. The conclusions emphasize the importance of a nuanced approach that considers not only the advantages but also the risks associated with adopting GenAI in the OEP world. Researching and developing how to apply these technologies to education is important to shape the future of education.