Reconceptualizing community of inquiry in the age of generative artificial intelligence

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The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework is widely used to guide and explain learning in online and blended environments. However, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) challenges a key assumption in CoI research and practice: that indicators of presence can be attributed primarily to human learners, instructors, and their interactions. GenAI can produce fluent discourse that resembles strong cognitive, social, or teaching presence. Yet such discourse may not reflect learners' thinking, relationships, or regulatory intentions. To date, research often frames GenAI as a tool, a dialogic partner, or a possible fourth presence. These views, however, do not fully capture GenAI's pervasive influence on inquiry processes. This paper therefore reconceptualizes CoI in the age of GenAI by positioning GenAI as an epistemic condition. This framing highlights that GenAI can shape inquiry through direct use, indirect mediation of learning tasks and expectations, and the latent influence of its availability on how contributions are interpreted, attributed, and evaluated. In this view, GenAI shapes what appears plausible, what counts as evidence, and how contributions are attributed, thereby altering how critical thinking is enacted and recognized in a community of inquiry. Drawing on sociomaterial and postdigital perspectives, we argue that CoI presences are sociotechnical accomplishments emerging through human-GenAI assemblages, rather than through human activity alone. The paper accordingly reinterprets cognitive, social, and teaching presence and proposes a configuration-based heuristic suggesting that the relationship between GenAI involvement and inquiry quality is conditional on human accountability. We conclude with implications for theory, practice, and future research, suggesting that CoI evaluation (e.g., coding schemes) may need refinement. In particular, indicators of presence can no longer be inferred from polished final texts alone. Instead, they require process-sensitive evidence, such as prompting and revision traces, disclosure and attribution practices, verification moves, and interaction logs that make the epistemic work of inquiry visible.