7 Acknowledging and referencing the use of AI
Acknowledging and referencing the use of AI
Please confirm with your course coordinator or lecturer before using any AI tools in your assessment tasks. Your course coordinator will provide guidance on whether AI tools can be used and to what extent. When using any AI tools to support your assessment, they must be acknowledged or referenced.
Acknowledging AI tools
In some assessment tasks, you may be able to use AI tools for background research, or to generate an outline for your essay or report. In this case, rather than citing and referencing specific text generated by AI tools, you will need to provide a general acknowledgement within the body or methods section of your text to explain that an AI tool was used in the creation of your work. Include as much detail as possible, including how you used the AI tool, the prompt used, the date you used the tool, and the name, creator and version of the AI tool. It’s important also to keep a record of when and how you have used the tool, and save any outputs generated.
Your course coordinator or lecturer may have a preference for how you declare your use of AI tools, however the following may be used as a guide:
- Provide a written acknowledgment of the use of generative AI tools.
- Specify which AI tools were used for the task.
- Describe how the information was generated, including the prompts.
- Explain how the generated content was used in your work.
Suggested formats
I acknowledge the use of <insert AI tool (s) and link> to <purpose of using generative AI>. The prompts used were <list of prompts>. The output from these prompts was used to <explain use>.
I acknowledge the use of <insert AI tool> to <purpose of using generative AI>. On <date> I <actions taken, including prompts>. The output was then <actions taken with generated content>. The links to my original work is <link here> and the AI output is <link here>.
Examples
On the 26th June 2023, I used the May 24 version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT to perform background research by using the following prompt “explain the difference between deep learning and machine learning”. The output was used to help me better understand these concepts.
On the 7th of February 2024, I used RMIT’s Val https://val.rmit.edu.au/ to find background information on Keynesian economics. The prompts used were:
- Act as a professor of economics, please provide background information for a university essay on Keynesian economics and how this influences economic policy today.
- Can you provide some information on influential writers or policymakers who have advocated Keynesian economics?
The outputs from these prompts (see Appendix 1) were used to identify key points for further research and draft outline of essay.
Citing and referencing content generated by AI tools
If you are allowed to use AI tools and have included any ideas or content provided by generative AI, these must be referenced and cited correctly. This applies to any type of output retrieved, including text, images and code. Not referencing sources accurately can be considered plagiarism and is considered a breach of academic integrity.
As generative AI is relatively new and continually evolving, many referencing styles are updating their advice on how to reference generative AI tools and there is not yet consistent advice on how to cite AI-generated content across the styles. We recommend regularly referring to the RMIT Library artificial intelligence referencing guidelines, as these are updated when the referencing styles update their advice.
