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AI and academic writing

Photo of a laptop with an AI tool on the screen.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) can be used for everything from correcting spelling and grammar to making much more comprehensive changes to your texts. What should you consider before starting to use AI in your academic writing? How do you learn best? What should be avoided?

How can I use generative AI to improve my academic writing?

Generative AI applications can be used to correct your spelling and grammar, much like the built-in language checkers in word processing software. However, depending on the type of tool and the instructions given, generative AI can also make wide-ranging changes to your texts, such as rewriting sentences or entire paragraphs. AI tools may therefore promote or hinder your writing development, depending on how you choose to use them.

If it is not clearly stated in the instructions, you always need to ask your lecturers if and how AI tools may be used in any writing assignment. Also remember to ask if and how you need to document AI use.

Do you need to submit a list of all the prompts you used?
Should AI use be described in the methods section of your text?
Should AI applications be added to the reference list?

If you are allowed to use generative AI, you should practise using it in a way that helps you to continue developing your skills. You may for example use a chatbot as a discussion partner by asking it questions. AI tools can further be used to generate ideas, propose outlines, formulate examples, or to produce summaries or translations of texts.

What should I consider when using AI to summarise difficult texts?

You are studying at university to develop your skills. If you always rely on AI-generated summaries you will become neither a better reader of academic texts nor a better writer of summaries. However, if you first produce your own summary and then compare it to an AI-generated summary, you may learn something.

How do the summaries differ, and why?
Do the summaries focus on the same aspects of the source text?

Remember

AI tools have no understanding of the subject or the context in which the source text is used in your studies. Chatbot summaries will therefore not necessarily be better than your own.
Safeguard your learning process. When you invest time in reading a text and trying to understand it well enough to be able to summarise it, you will also remember the content better. Outsourcing this step in the learning process to AI may have a detrimental effect on your studies.

Tips for effective reading during your studies

Read Effectively (University of Arkansas)
Reading and making notes (University of Reading)
Research, reading & note-taking (University of Kent)

What should I consider when using AI to improve my writing skills?

Using AI to make considerable improvements to your texts at a single click will not help you to become a better writer. You will improve your writing skills more by writing on your own than by outsourcing writing tasks to AI. One way of using AI to hone your writing skills is to use AI only on a short section of your text. You can ask a chatbot to improve the flow of your text or make it sound more formal in a single paragraph and then edit the rest of the text using the AI-improved paragraph as an example.

Remember

You are always responsible for the final product you submit.
You must always consider all AI-generated suggestions before implementing them. Some may not suit your text, style or subject. AI-generated texts also tend to lack the conciseness and precision required in academic writing.
You should always note down or take screenshots of the prompts you used so that you can show how your text developed.

Transparency is important – you must always be able to show how you have used AI tools.

You are always responsible for all texts submitted as part of your studies

If a spellchecker or an AI application like Grammarly suggests language changes that include words or concepts you are unfamiliar with, you need to ensure that you fully understand what the changes will mean before you accept them. Always look up new words in a dictionary and consider whether changes make sense in your text.

Do you completely understand your text after making the changes?
Do the suggested formulations suit your context and the type of text you are writing? Are they used in your subject?
Does the text (content, style and register) reflect your knowledge and skills accurately?

Do not upload your own or others’ material carelessly

Consider your own integrity, as well as that of others, before uploading texts or other material to an AI application. When you use generative AI you are transmitting data to the company that owns the tool, and you have little or no control over how the material you upload is used.

Do you have copyright to the material you upload? Do you have the right to change uploaded materials? Material may be text, images, video, sound, code, etcetera.
Did your interviewees consent to their answers or part of your recordings or transcripts being uploaded to an AI application?
Do you have the consent of the company where you did your degree project to upload information on their business or processes to an AI application?

Can I use AI as a source?

The short answer is no. Generative AI applications are tools rather than sources of facts.

A chatbot may be used as a discussion partner. You can for example start an assignment by asking it questions to learn more about a topic or generate ideas. However, the answers you get are only based on language patterns likely to occur and are therefore not necessarily factually accurate. Moreover, each chat is unique. So even when you cite generative AI as a source you are unable to refer your reader to the exact material you used. All information retrieved from a chatbot must be evaluated critically, and you need to verify accuracy by using other reliable sources that can be cited.

However, in some cases you may use AI-generated material in a writing assignment or project. AI-generated images, videos, sound files, code, and so on may be regarded as sources in their own right, for example when you want to

document present trends,
examine linguistic features of chatbot answers, or
investigate patterns appearing in AI-generated material.

To document a trend, you may use a formulation like: "When asked in April 2024 Who is going to win the US elections later this year?, the chatbot provided the following answer:" followed by the complete answer you received.

Below there are more examples of citing AI-generated material.

Please note that guidelines from the major referencing systems and styles are constantly changing as AI use increases. So make sure that you follow the latest recommendations for citing AI-generated material. As always, you also need to know which type of material you want to cite – the same referencing system usually has different guidelines for citing text, images, or code.

Follow these three steps when you consider using AI-generated material in your work:

Check that you may use AI-generated material in the specific project/assignment. If this is not clear from the instructions, ask your lecturer before proceeding.
Check that the AI-generated material is licensed for reuse. Read more on copyright.
Cite the generated material in accordance with the referencing system you use.

Start with the three steps above:

Am I allowed to use AI-generated material in my assignment?
Yes, the instructions say that you may use AI-generated images, but you have to describe how they were generated.
May the AI-generated material be reused?
In this example we used Wepik to generate an image. According to Wepik, and most other generative AI tools, the author of the prompt also has copyright to the generated content.
How are images cited according to the referencing system I use?
According to APA 7, each image reproduced from a source must be accompanied by a note indicating its origin. The source must also appear in the reference list (see the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 2020, section 7.7, pp. 198–199). APA does not yet have specific guidelines for citing AI-generated images, so we can assume that these must be handled in the same way.

Template: Figure note

Image generated using the AI application (Author/Developer) based on the prompt “Write out the entire prompt you used” (year).

Template: In-text citation

(Author/Developer, year)

Template: Reference list

Author/Developer. (year). AI application [AI image generator]. URL

Example figure with citation and reference according to APA 7

Figure 1

An AI-generated image of London in summer

Image generated using Wepik (Freepik) based on the prompt “London in summer” (2023)

Note: Image generated using Wepik (Freepik) based on the prompt “London in summer” (2023).

In-text citation

AI tools can reproduce and reinforce biases. Based on the prompt “London in summer” Wepik (Freepick, 2023) generated an image showing several well-known London landmarks (fig. 1). However, the people shown in the generated image are almost all young and white. This does not reflect London’s actual demography . . .

Reference list

Freepik (2023). Wepik [AI image generator]. https://wepik.com/

Follow the same steps using the guidelines for other source types and referencing systems.