Universities worldwide are encouraged to embrace Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their core functions despite its potential threats. There are debates globally on how to integrate AI decently in universities after the situation proves its inevitability to accommodate AI in learning activities in the technological revolution era. This study explored teacher educators’ perceptions, readiness, and the use of generative AI (GenAI). It focused on teacher educators’ perceptions of GenAI and their use and control of students’ unethical use. A study employed a case study design with 21 teacher educators from Dire Dawa and Mzumbe Universities who participated in interviews. The findings indicate that teacher educators perceive GenAI as a critical and inevitable technological application that requires proper mechanisms to curb indecent use and pose a threat to developing twenty-first-century competencies. Although most teacher educators admit to using GenAI, few use it for teaching purposes, and some do not due to a lack of proper control mechanisms, as they acknowledge the difficulty in identifying students’ work written by GenAI. Therefore, universities should capacitate teacher educators and students by devising appropriate guidelines to safeguard the integration of GenAI that diminish the possible threats to enhancing the training of competent, innovative, and employable graduates.