These AI tools have been reviewed for safety and data privacy by St. John Fisher University's Office of Information Technology. The prompts you enter will not be used outside of our organization. Therefore, these tools are listed below as protected generative AI tools for use by faculty, staff, and students at Fisher.
There are many other generative AI tools that can only be accessed via personal account creation outside the systems and infrastructure that Fisher maintains and supports. You must evaluate if you want to create an account on these platforms and if you are comfortable sharing any of your own personal information necessary to create the account. For more information you can visit St. John Fisher University's AI Toolkit: How To Access AI Tools.
You can access Copilot from any major web browser, including Chrome, Safari, or Microsoft Edge. Go to https://copilot.microsoft.com/ to begin using this tool. You must be logged in with your Fisher account in order to ensure the data you enter into Copilot is protected under our Fisher licensing. This means the data is not used outside our organization to train the large language model overall. To make sure you are logged in, verify you see your name and the protected indicator in the upper right corner. Need help logging in? Contact the OIT Service Desk (585-385-8016 or oitservicedesk@sjf.edu) for assistance.
You must be logged in with your Fisher account in order to ensure the data you enter into Gemini is protected under our Fisher licensing. This means the data is not used outside our organization to train the large language model overall. To make sure you are logged in, verify you see your name in the upper right corner of the window and your Fisher email appears when you hover over that location. Need help logging in? Contact the OIT Service Desk (585-385-8016 or oitservicedesk@sjf.edu) for assistance.
According to general St. John Fisher University policy, "Students are permitted to use AI tools on their own to study, to further explore course topics, to brainstorm ideas, and to seek assistance from campus services who may use generative AI tools as part of their support."
Visit Fisher's AI Toolkit for more information about using AI. From the Toolkit:
"In accordance with the University's policies and the Fisher Outcomes, the use of generative AI is permitted in some courses under certain conditions. Students who use generative AI must understand that it can generate inaccurate or misleading content, use copyrighted material without proper attribution, and generate biased or discriminatory content that is not appropriate for any course. Thus, a student who uses AI takes final responsibility for any AI generated output in their assignments. Therefore, the student must:
"Know what your instructor allows or prohibits for each particular course, as it probably varies.
- If generative AI is used, a student must:
- Disclose its use with enough detail for the professor to understand how it was used in the assignment.
- Cite its use per APA, MLA, or whatever citation system you are using.
- Fact check AI output using reliable sources, such as academic databases and news websites.
- Evaluate AI output for potential bias, discrimination, and other ethical concerns."
If your instructor allows the use of generative AI, you can use the prompts on this page and visit the AI Toolkit: Student Resources for ideas and tips.
You can use AI tools like a personal research assistant who is helping you make a research plan. (Just don't bother asking it to help you find scholarly sources.) It’s not the same thing as meeting with a librarian or your course instructor, but it can be helpful.
They can:
Lavery Library can help. Contact the Fisher librarians, who can help you do things like find scholarly sources and use generative AI tools when your instructors allow it. Librarians can help you explore research topics, fact-check information from generative AI tools, and find sources.
You can try these prompts in Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, and other text-based AI platforms. Copy and paste the following text, customizing it for your topic:
Did you find articles?
Wait! ChatGPT and other gen AI tools can make articles/links seem like scholarly, academic sources when they really are not. And, sometimes they even make up fake articles and books.
Check and see if the sources are real. (A librarian can help.) And, if they are, find and read the full text (PDF or hard copy). We show you how to do this on Evaluating & Citing:
Microsoft Copilot other generative AI like ChatGPT currently do a terrible job when it comes to finding scholarly sources. They may improve in the future, but for now:
Use generative AI to find ideas. Use the library to find sources.
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT will "hallucinate" sources. In other words, AI will create fake information. This can include recommending sources that don't exist and misrepresenting a real source by inaccurately reporting what it says.
This is one of the biggest reasons to use the library to find sources, and to evaluate and fact-check the sources you find using an AI tool.
We are continually testing Copilot and ChatGPT and other generative AI tools. Over and over again we see the same thing: AI will say something is a scholarly, peer-reviewed article when it's not. Sometimes it's an undergraduate student paper. Other times it's something else, such as an ebook chapter or on online report.
If you ask for scholarly, peer-reviewed sources, it is your responsibility to find, read, evaluate, and cite any sources suggested by these tools. Librarians can help you do this. We can also help you use generative AI when it is allowed in your coursework.
Chatbots aren't neutral. They can produce results that demonstrate political bias, racism, sexism, and other biases.
These tools are bad at creating citations. They don’t properly format citations in APA, MLA, or other styles.
Hallucination is one of the biggest reasons to evaluate and fact-check the sources you find using an AI tool. Visit Evaluating & Citing to learn more:
You should be cautious about entering any copyrighted material into the prompt of any generative AI tool.
Here are a few scenarios to consider:
These tools use AI differently than Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT. They are research-focused. They allow you to conduct literature searches in order to find articles on your topic.
Each of these tools can show you earlier papers referenced in an article and show you who has cited an article since it was published.
You can set up your own account to use these tools.