The conversation about artificial intelligence in higher education often moves faster than the available evidence. The study by Eva Jiménez-García, Judit Ruiz-Lázaro, Sonia Martínez-Requejo, and Sara Redondo-Duarte seeks to bring some order to this rapidly evolving field through a systematic review of 42 studies on chatbots and artificial intelligence in higher education.
The analysis reveals a field that has grown at remarkable speed, particularly since 2020, with more than half of the articles included in the review published in 2023. But it also shows that research extends well beyond ChatGPT or academic support: applications include student guidance, tutoring, management, mental health, motivation, personalised learning, and administrative assistance.
One of the most interesting aspects of the article is its attempt to connect this technological expansion with sustainability. The relationship, however, is far from even. Of the 42 studies analysed, only 21 were associated in Web of Science with a Sustainable Development Goal, and ten of these focused on SDG 4, Quality Education. Health and well-being, reduced inequalities, clean energy, and climate action appear much more marginally.
Rather than demonstrating that chatbots are already making a broad contribution to the 2030 Agenda, the data point to a research agenda that remains highly uneven: there are still many areas of sustainability in which we know very little about what AI might contribute to higher education.
The review is particularly useful because it avoids presenting the adoption of these tools as an automatic or straightforward process. Alongside their educational potential, it identifies challenges related to interoperability, privacy, academic integrity, the quality of interactions, and acceptance by both students and faculty.
It also acknowledges an important methodological limitation: the corpus is drawn exclusively from Web of Science, a decision that improves the consistency of the bibliometric analysis but narrows the scope of the literature examined. The article therefore leaves us with a more critical, and ultimately more useful, perspective: the question is no longer whether AI will enter higher education, but on what evidence, to solve which problems, and under what institutional conditions its adoption is genuinely worthwhile.
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How to Cite: Jiménez-García, E., Ruiz-Lázaro, J., Martínez-Requejo, S., & Redondo-Duarte, S. (2025). Artificial Intelligence and chatbots for sustainable higher education: a systematic review. RIED-Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia, 28(2), 81–104. https://doi.org/10.5944/ried.28.2.43240
