AI support for students

Using AI in your studies

Whether and how you may use AI tools depends on the course, the assignment, and your teacher's instructions. Always check the course guidelines and reflect on why you are reaching for an AI tool before using AI in any coursework. Ask your teacher if anything is unclear. Using AI in ways that aren't permitted or failing to disclose AI use when disclosure is required may harm your learning and in some cases constitute academic misconduct. Don’t be afraid of AI, but realize that you are responsible for how and why you use it.

Before you use AI for coursework

• Check what's allowed. Rules vary between courses, between assignments within a course, and between different parts of an assignment (for example, AI may be permitted for brainstorming but not for drafting text). If it isn't stated, ask your teacher.
• Be ready to disclose and explain. Many courses require you to declare how you used AI in your submissions. Keep records of your prompts and the outputs you received, and be prepared to describe and justify your use. This isn’t about policing AI use, it is about getting you to think about how and why you use it; it is about building critical thinking.
• Think about your learning, not just your output. The goal of your studies is for you to develop knowledge and skills. AI that produces an answer for you is not the same as AI that helps you learn. Before reaching for an AI tool, ask yourself whether it is helping you build the understanding the course is designed to develop, or replace it. A polished assignment you didn't really engage with is a poor foundation for the next course, your thesis, and your professional work.
• The work you submit must be your own. Even where AI use is permitted, the thinking, judgement, and argument in your submission must be yours. You are responsible for what you submit: always verify, reflect upon and critically assess the opinions (yes treat them as opinions, not fact) provided by the AI.

Where AI may be helpful

The uses below are common ways students use AI. Each comes with things to watch for, and each is subject to your course's rules and your critical assessment of the AI outputs.

• Study planning and structure. AI can act as a discussion partner to help you plan your week, break down a large task, or talk through a topic you're trying to understand.
• Practice and feedback. AI can generate practice questions and give quick feedback, which can be useful for self-testing. Be aware that the feedback may be wrong or superficial. Always verify against course materials or other information sources.
• Writing support. AI can suggest improvements to text structure, proofread your text, and point out unclear passages. Note that having AI rewrite, restructure, or substantially edit your text is not helping you develop your skills and may not be permitted (and require disclosure even when it is allowed). Your voice and your reasoning should remain in the final text, and you should be able to explain anything you present if asked.
• Explaining difficult texts. AI explanations can help you get a foothold in unfamiliar material, but they can also be wrong or oversimplified. Treat them as a starting point, not a substitute for the reading, and verify against the source.
• Summarizing texts. AI can summarize documents you upload. Consider carefully whether this is appropriate for your assignment: if the course expects you to read and engage with the texts yourself, summarizing them with AI may undermine your learning and may breach course rules.
• Note-taking and transcription. AI can transcribe and summarize audio. Do not record or upload lectures, seminars, or supervision meetings without the explicit consent of the lecturer and all participants. This is both a legal requirement and a matter of academic culture at SLU.
• Translation. AI can translate text in most languages quickly. Translations must always be reviewed by a competent reader before being published, submitted, or disseminated.
• Suggesting analysis methods. AI can suggest, for example, statistical approaches. It may also suggest methods that are inappropriate for your data, your field, or your assumptions. Always verify with course materials, your teacher, or a statistician before relying on a suggestion. For any code generated by AI, verify the outputs and check it is doing what was expected. Consult with on how to use AI effectively and ethically when working with analysis.

Risks and reasons to be careful when using AI

Accuracy. AI-generated content can contain factual errors, hallucinations (i.e., outputs that sound plausible but are entirely incorrect or not based on real sources), fabricated or misleading references, distortions, and bias. It may also reproduce copyrighted material or reflect inaccuracies present in its training data. Because of this, AI output should not be treated as an authoritative source. Always verify important information using reliable and independent sources before relying on it for academic, professional, or decision-making purposes. Critically assess its opinions and use them to help you understand ideas, not to use it to generate ideas that you then pass off as your own.

Data Security: Be careful what you put into an AI tool. Avoid uploading:

- Personal data about yourself or others

- Classmates' work, peer-review drafts, or group materials without consent

- Copyrighted course materials, articles, or texts behind paywalls

- Unpublished research data, thesis material, or anything governed by ethics approvals, confidentiality agreements, or NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements)

Account and cost. Many AI services require a private account, and several cost money. SLU does not require you to pay for AI tools to complete your studies. However, be aware that free tools are often less reliable or have other caveats you should consider when using them.

Service Security and Privacy . Pay attention to the security and privacy practices of any service you use and preferably use tools that SLU has reviewed or recommended where available. For example, check whether the tool clearly explains how your data are stored and used, and whether it states if your inputs are used for training AI models. Choose options in the settings that minimize the risk of inputs being used for future training where possible. Avoid tools that do not provide a privacy policy or have unclear data handling practices. Also, be cautious with browser extensions or free AI tools that request broad access to your data and only grant permissions that are clearly necessary for the tool’s function.

If you're unsure

Ask your teacher, course coordinator, or examiner. It is always better to ask before submitting it than to discover afterwards that your use of AI was not permitted.This page gives a general orientation. It does not override course-specific rules.

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