Supervisor guidance for research degrees

As a research degree supervisor, your responsibility is to ensure that your postgraduate research students (PGRs) are fully informed of University policies and regulations about ethical and responsible use of AI in their teaching and research work.

Postgraduate researchers have full responsibility for how they use AI in their learning and research work.

It is expected that supervisors will advise postgraduate researchers about the use of Gen AI tools in their research and make sure that students are aware of the limitations and scope of using such tools.

You should discuss which of the assessment categories (red, amber or green) applies to the process and outputs of your student’s research.

Supporting guidance

There is specific guidance on the use of Generative AI (Gen AI) for postgraduate researchers.

You may also find it helpful to consult the other guidance on this website that is designed to help colleagues think through issues related to the outputs of AI tools and how to approach research, teaching and assessment, including the expectations for the ethical and responsible use of AI.

Ethics and risks

Together with your student, you should carefully consider the ethics and risks associated with using Gen AI for research. This especially applies to copyright and ownership, where Gen AI tools imitate or summarise existing content without the permission or acknowledgement of the original content.

For PGRs engaged in the development or use of AI in any type of research you should ensure that the AI usage is ethical and conforms to the University of Leeds regulations, including where appropriate and necessary by engaging with the ethics review processes and obtaining authorisation from a faculty research ethics committee.

Record the agreed use of Gen AI

Make sure that the agreed use of Gen AI is recorded in the GRAD supervision meeting records.

Data management

You should discuss with your PGRs how they will store or can share their work, and ensure this is documented as part of their Data Management Plan.

Further guidance

Please email AI@leeds.ac.uk for specific guidance.