Acknowledging use of Generative AI

In all cases, you are required to truthfully acknowledge what elements of any work you submit are your own work or ideas, and what has come from other sources – including Gen AI.

You must acknowledge the use of Gen AI in an ‘Acknowledgements’ or 'Declarations' section when you have used it as a functional tool to assist you as you were creating any academic work.

You should make clear in your work where you have used Gen AI (eg for support with writing style but not for content).

If it is suspected that you have used a Gen AI tool to produce part of your work, but you have not acknowledged this use, this could be investigated under the Academic Misconduct procedure.

Gen AI is evolving rapidly and there is not yet consensus on how to acknowledge and reference it. The minimum requirement to include in acknowledgement is:

• Name and version of the generative AI system used eg ChatGPT-4.0
• Publisher (company that made the AI system) eg OpenAI
• URL of the AI system
• Brief description (single sentence) of the context in which you used the tool.

Further requirements may be stipulated by a department, academic programme, individual teaching staff, supervisors or for a particular assignment. These will be made clear when an assignment is set. Details of such requirements will usually be provided in the assessment brief. For research degrees this is explained in the generative AI guidance for postgraduate researchers.

The Library’s Referencing pages provide guidance for how to reference generative AI tools and their outputs for Leeds Harvard and Leeds Numeric referencing styles. If your School's referencing style is different, check the official guidance for more information.