What is Generative AI?  
Generative AI are artificial intelligence (AI) models that answer questions in a conversational way. Instead of returning a series of websites like a search engine, generative AI provides a summarized sentence, paragraph, or essay. It can even write poetry or create data tables. ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and DALL-E are examples of generative AI models.  AI is a tool you might use as part of the learning process and it is not a replacement for your own critical thinking.

Academic Integrity   

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Generative AI models should never be used to write papers or assignments for you. Doing so violates the university’s academic integrity policy. Academic integrity is trustworthiness about where you got your information and how your finished product was made. Original work is an expectation at the university level.    

Your instructors will provide more guidance about whether generative AI can be used in their courses. You can face penalties for academic integrity violations using generative AI. 

Studying with AI tools might be okay! 
Check the syllabus!  Ask the instructor!

Potential Concerns:

• Data Privacy
• Intellectual Property & Copyright Issues
• Accuracy

Course materials may be original content protected by copyright laws and intended for personal academic use.  
Issues around uploading material to AI platforms, including audio transcription apps, include concerns about privacy, intellectual property rights, and potential violations by the training of AI using stored information in cloud databases.  

Currently, the U of A has an agreement with Microsoft that safeguards data from being used to train AI.  Using the UA licensed versions of Microsoft transcription and CoPilot can generally be regarded as acceptable use.  Google Notebook LM also states the following:  "We value your privacy and do not use your personal data to train NotebookLM... including your source uploads, queries, and the responses from the model for training."