It is your responsibility to check with your instructors to find out whether they allow tools like ChatGPT, and how you may use them for your course.
You can use AI tools like a personal research assistant. It’s not the same thing as meeting with a librarian or your course instructor, but it can be helpful.
Chatbots like ChatGPT can:
Lavery Library can help. Contact the Fisher librarians, who can help you do things like find scholarly sources and understand how to create citations and references lists.
Librarians can also help you 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 gen 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 gen AI to find ideas. Use the library to find sources.
Gen AI tools like ChatGPT will "hallucinate" sources when asked to "cite their sources" by a user; in other words, it will create fake information. The fake information can include sources that don't exist or misrepresentation of a real source by inaccurately reporting what it says. This is one of the biggest reasons to evaluate and fact-check the sources you find using an AI tool.
It is your responsibility to find, read, evaluate, and cite any sources suggested by these tools. Librarians can help you do this. They 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.
When you are using these tools, you will find abstracts and snippets from articles. To find and read the full text (PDF) of an article, you can follow the steps in Lavery Library's tutorial Finding Full Text: Article Title. Visit Evaluating & Citing for more how-tos.