DISS: Plagiarism, Academic Misconduct, and use of Gen AI

Remember the good scholarly practice requirements of the University regarding work for credit. You can find guidance at the School page. This also has links to the relevant University pages.

See also the following general guide on how to avoid plagiarism.

Guidance on the use of Generative AI

To ensure all students have an equal opportunity to succeed and to preserve the integrity of the project and dissertation, students are not permitted to submit text that is generated by artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT, Bing Chat, Claude, Google Bard, or any other automated assistance.

This includes using AI to directly generate text for the dissertation, code for the projects, or using AI to complete any other project tasks. Using AI in this way undermines your ability to develop critical thinking, writing, and research skills essential to the project and your academic success. Students may use AI as part of their research and preparation for ideas, or judiciously as a text editor, but text that is submitted must be written by the student.

For example, students may use AI to generate ideas, questions, or summaries that they then revise, expand, or cite properly. Students should also be aware of the potential benefits and limitations of using AI as a tool for learning and research. AI systems can provide helpful information or suggestions, but they are not always reliable or accurate. Students should critically evaluate the sources, methods, and outputs of AI systems. Violations of this policy will be treated as academic misconduct.

In short, the ‘AI-Assisted Editing’ rule defined on the School webpage is applied to the assessment of projects and dissertations. There may be specific projects in which further use of generative AI tools is acceptable, for example where such tools are the object of study. Any such usage should be agreed in advance with the project supervisor, notified immediately to the project coordinator and school academic misconduct officer, and described explicitly in the dissertation.

Please see the University’s Guidance on the use of Generative AI (University webpage) for further details.