Artificial intelligence (AI) is a rapidly developing area wherein computer generated content is being used to create text, images and other resources.
Referencing
If you decide to use these tools in your assignments you must reference them. To reference AI generated content, please see our Harvard Bath referencing guide and look under Generative AI content/Chat GPT and we have separate guidance on referencing AI generated images. We also recommend that you review the Centre for Learning and Teaching's guidance on referencing. If you have any questions about referencing AI generated content in your assignments, please email us at library@bath.ac.uk.
Using AI generated content
Artificial intelligence extracts information from the internet to generate content. Therefore, AI generated content may contain biases and not produce factual information. AI generated content can be inconsistent and you might find different answers for the same queries. You should be aware of this if you want to refer back to something the AI content produced previously. You should critically evaluate any AI generated content you do use, as you would with any information you refer to and consider what its strengths and weaknesses are? Take a look at our guidance on lateral reading for more on this.
The journal articles, books and other scholarly resources which are available through the Library are usually peer-reviewed, which means that experts in the subject areas have scrutinised the work before it has been published. Although you should still be critical of what you are reading, the quality of the resources and the facts provided through peer-reviewed resources will be of a much greater quality than computer generated content as it currently stands.
AI currently has severe limitations with dealing with data in terms of mathematics and producing graphs and charts. If you decide to use AI you should use it as a tool to help, not as a means to writing an assignment. If you used AI to write an assignment and claim it as your own work, it would be considered plagiarism, which the University takes very seriously and could harm your university degree and career. For these reasons, managing your time, researching widely and referencing all of your tools and resources is important.