Ethics and GenAI
Clear guidance will be provided by your subject coordinator for how you can use generative AI.
Some of the key ethical considerations to consider as a student are:
- Academic integrity. If the use of GenAI has not been allowed by your subject coordinator, using this content in your assignment is considered academic misconduct (cheating). Even when the use of GenAI is allowed, any content that you use must be appropriately referenced or acknowledged.
- Privacy concerns. When you submit content to a GenAI tool, you give them the right to re-use and distribute this content. So it is important not to enter any personal details, confidential data or text from your assignments or research. If you do, you may be giving away your intellectual property.
- Copyright and Intellectual Property. Entering copies of text, images, teaching materials, sound or video that you did not create, or is not licensed for this sort of use, into GenAI, is likely to be a breach of copyright. Some AI tools may also be illegally drawing from copyright protected materials. You need to check the AI tool terms and conditions to understand how they use copyright content in the tool and your responsibilities when generating AI content
- Bias and discrimination. Content created by Generative AI is often less trustworthy because the source data is not provided. This makes it harder to understand the context it was created in and any possible biases the authors may have.