"Students must be the authors of their own work."
Several top UK universities have announced a ban on the use of ChatGPT and other AI programs.
This comes after universities fear students will use ChatGPT to write their assessments.
Since ChatGPT arrived in November 2022, eight of the 24 Russell Group universities have officially banned the program.
This includes Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, Bristol and Edinburgh.
Due to ChatGPT’s precise output, universities have had to update their plagiarism policies and detection softwares.
Almost 40% of all universities across the UK have either banned ChatGPT or were in the process of revising their policies to outlaw the chatbot.
Twenty per cent of all UK universities have banned the software.
A University of Oxford spokesperson said:
“Students have been informed that until further notice we will not permit the use of AI tools such as ChatGPT in their assessed work.”
The university will be issuing fresh guidance to students shortly and will work with exam boards “to minimise problems and concerns in the current assessment cycle”.
A University of Cambridge spokesperson said:
“Students must be the authors of their own work.
“Content produced by AI platforms, such as ChatGPT, does not represent the student’s own original work so would be considered a form of academic misconduct to be dealt with under the university’s disciplinary procedures.”
As the exam season approaches, a further 28 universities other than Russell Groups have also reviewed their policies.
The universities of Northumbria, Northampton and Essex said they were reviewing their existing policies to deal with “emerging technologies”.
Glasgow Caledonian University said it would academic staff “what to look out for when marking assessments in order to help identify work that has not been written by a student”.
But other universities have discussed ways in which they will embrace ChatGPT.
Glasgow University said its staff are keen to explore “how students can be advised to use large language models responsibly in their coursework”.
University College London has updated its website to provide guidance to students on how to use ChatGPT to help them write bibliographies, acknowledgements and references.
On its website, the university said:
“We believe these tools are potentially transformative as well as disruptive.”
“We will support you in using them effectively, ethically and transparently.”
A spokesperson for the University of Birmingham said:
“The use of AI chatbots such as ChatGPT to attempt to gain an unfair advantage in assessment would be considered unacceptable under our Code of Practice on Academic Integrity and Student Conduct Regulations.
“We have also updated our guidance for students to be clear about this.”
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