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Before you consider using AI in your research, think about these issues in relation to your research and your collaborators (from Wheatley & Hervieux, 2024):
Explore the software you would like to use and fully review its terms and conditions. Many generative AI tools have questionable intellectual property terms.
Consider how the AI tool will be used in relation to your project.
Set clear guidelines with all research partners on how an AI tool should be used.
Be transparent about the use of your AI tool in your work.
If you're interested in learning about using AI in your academic writing, please see our Academic Writing guide.
Asking some AI software to generate a reference list has been proven to result in largely non-factual citations (Pride et al., 2023). For instance, the table below compares true, false, and inaccurate references generated by ChatGPT. Note the large amount of red dots!
Citations to Answers Given by ChatGPT (Pride et al., 2023)
If you want to use AI to help you find relevant references, avoid ChatGPT. There are a number of other AI tools designed to help with finding references (see the list of resources on this page). Remember, a reference list demonstrates your knowledge and supports your work, so you want it to exist! AI is meant to help ease your workload, not erase it.
Pride, D., Cancellieri, M., & Knoth, P. (2023). CORE-GPT: Combining Open Access research and large language models for credible, trustworthy question answering. https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2307.04683
Some examples of AI research tools are listed below. You can also consult the Tools page to find more AI software to help you with your research.