Using generative AI in your studies: guidelines for students | Computing

• The University trusts you to act with integrity in your use of generative AI for your studies.
• It does not ban the use of generative AI, though its use is restricted for assessment.
• Some of your courses may also restrict its use in other ways. Always check your course level guidance.
• These top-level guidelines provide clarity on which uses of generative AI are strictly prohibited and constitute academic misconduct.
• They also explain why you should be cautious about over-reliance on generative AI for your learning.
• This guidance is general and sets out the basics of the University’s position – it is essential that you also check the detailed information provided for each of your courses.

Generative AI at Edinburgh

The University recognises that developing skills in the responsible use of generative AI is important and will likely be significant for your future life and work. It also recognises that there are times when you may want – or be asked – to use it in your current studies. We want to ensure that you have the knowledge and skills to thrive in a changing world, and we recognise that generative AI can be used creatively, critically and with integrity.

These guidelines are general to the whole University. It is important that you are aware that each course will have its own, more detailed, guidance. You should always check your course documentation on this, and speak to your Course Organiser if you are unsure.

The University trusts you as students to act responsibly in relation to the use of generative AI. It also recognises that you need clarity on when its use breaches the University’s rules on academic misconduct. These guidelines provide you with this clarity.

Unacceptable uses of generative AI for assessment

Passing off someone – or something’s – work as your own for an assessment is academic misconduct. This could be failing to cite a source you have used in piece of assessed work, getting someone else to complete an assessment for you, claiming authorship of machine-generated content or presenting machine-translated work as your own.

If you submit a piece of work for assessment that is not your own original work you risk being investigated according to the university’s academic misconduct investigation procedures. This could have serious implications for you and your studies.

The following uses of generative AI are not acceptable and constitute misconduct: if you use them you risk investigation and penalties.

Presenting AI outputs as your own, original work.
Use of an AI translator to convert assessments to English before submission: English is the language of teaching and assessment at Edinburgh – machine translation is treated as false authorship and is not acceptable.
Submitting an assessment which includes elements of AI-generated text without acknowledgment.
Submitting an assessment which includes AI-generated images, audio or video without acknowledgment.
Submitting an assessment which includes AI-generated mathematical formulae or reasoning, or computer code, without acknowledgment.
Citing AI-found sources without reading and verifying them.

For more detailed information about the restrictions around using AI-supported online proofing tools, please see the University’s Guidance on Proofreading of Student Assessments.

Using generative AI to support your learning

While we have these clear restrictions around the use of generative AI in your assessed work, the University understands that there are ways in which you may wish to use it to support your studies.

This might include using it to:

brainstorm ideas
get quick definitions of concepts
overcome writer’s block through dialogue
check your grammar
organise or summarise information
re-format your references

Some courses may encourage or even require you to use it in certain ways, while others may ask you not to use it at all. Again, it is important that you check your course-level guidance on this.

Reasons to be cautious about your use of generative AI

You should be aware that there are risks and disadvantages associated with over-use of generative AI to support learning.

Cognitive offloading

There is growing research evidence that over-use of generative AI can negatively affect your learning. You may want to look at studies which raise concern over how ‘cognitive offloading’, ‘metacognitive laziness’ and reduction in capacity for critical thinking may be associated with over-reliance on this technology.

If you routinely use generative AI for breaking down and summarising long texts, for example, you will not be developing your own critical skills in the analysis of complex documents. You will also not be practicing and learning how to bring together complex ideas using the power of your own intelligence. Similarly, if you are using it to regularly assist with mathematical reasoning or coding, you are undermining your own ability to learn and become expert at doing this yourself. To make the most of your time at university, embracing the hard work of learning is a better approach than looking for short-cuts.

Bias and inaccuracy

Generative AI models are not ‘intelligent’ in the way that humans are intelligent. They have been trained on more text than a human could ever read, but have different capabilities and make different mistakes. While their output often appears convincing and reliable, their behaviour is strongly influenced by the data they are trained on, so they can perpetuate harmful biases, fabricate information and make errors. You will be held accountable for these errors and biases if you include them in assessed work.

Higher education should help you develop advanced knowledge which is creative and rigorous, not generic and unreliable. It is best to use your time at university to develop high-level skills that are going to help you throughout life – original thought, engaging writing, critical use of evidence, creative risk-taking and innovation.

Using the University’s own generative AI platform (ELM)

All University of Edinburgh students have free access to ELM, which offers you a secure gateway to a range of generative AI models.

The university encourages you to use ELM over other platforms such as GPT, DeepSeek, Grok etc for the following reasons:

In ELM your data is secure – it will not be retained by third party services to train their models or for any other purpose.
It is free to use for all staff and students, providing the same access for all and saving you money.
ELM provides access to a range of language models including a locally-hosted instance of Llama. This has an optimized architecture that can achieve faster response times and reduced power consumption. You can also choose other models such as GPT within ELM if necessary for your task.
Your lecturers do not have access to your chat history in ELM for the purposes of 'checking' your work - like your email account, it is private to you.

You can access ELM and find out about training opportunities here.

Acknowledging your use of AI

If you choose to use generative AI for aspects of an assessment, it is important to be transparent about how you have done so. You should include a brief acknowledgment at the end of your piece of work, for example:

I used OpenAI o4 Mini via ELM to check grammar and spelling throughout my assignment.

I also used the Create Image function in ChatGPT to generate the image on page 2.

Again – check the detail in your course guidance if you are unsure what is required, as there may be specific things your Course Organiser would like you to cover in your acknowledgment.

Citing your use of generative AI

If you use content generated by AI within your work, for example an AI-generated image or text from an AI chatbot, you will need to reference it. This means including an in-text citation or footnote in the body of your work, and a corresponding reference in your reference list.

The Library’s guide to using generative AI gives very useful guidance on this.

Environmental and social impact of generative AI

Many in our community are concerned about the negative impacts of generative AI in areas such as:

Energy and resource use

Exploitative labour practices

Intellectual property

You may wish to read more about these via the links above.

While there are ongoing efforts to reduce the environmental impact of the datacentres that make AI models work, it is clear that use of generative AI has a higher impact than, for example, a simple web search. If you are concerned about this, consider using the locally-hosted instance of Llama in ELM (see above). It is more efficient in terms of resource use, and provides a more transparent alternative to OpenAI, meaning that it is easier for the university to measure and manage its power consumption.

You might also try to limit use of generative AI to purposeful rather than casual use.