Let’s chat about ChatGPT: exploring accounting educators’ perceptions of nascent generative AI

Widespread use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools, such as ChatGPT, has disrupted education, particularly in accounting, where ChatGPT can perform well in traditional assessments. This study examines ChatGPT's impact on accounting education across five countries, exploring educators’ perceptions, challenges, adaptations, experiences and institutional responses. Despite calls to embrace GenAI, accounting educators expressed concern about the implications. This study provides a snapshot of their views, their insights, investigating challenges, experiences and innovative pedagogical strategies. A thematic analysis of reflections from accounting academics across the UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, supplemented by focus groups, captures educators’ lived experiences. These included fears about academic integrity, seeking comfort in invigilated exams, uncertainty about ethical issues and varying institutional support. Many educators felt GenAI could facilitate opportunities to enhance learning, rethink assessment design, and should be embraced similarly to previous technological disruptions to accounting education. This study contributes to accounting education by documenting how accounting educators across five countries responded to the emergence of ChatGPT. It captures the strategies that educators described using to protect assessment integrity and support student learning in the early stages of GenAI adoption, offering insight into how accounting educators navigated this period of disruption.