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What is Gen AI?

What is GenAI?

Generative Artificial Intelligence, or GenAI, is a type of artificial intelligence that allows machines to create new content like text, images, music, videos, code, and more, based on inputs or prompts.  These GenAI systems are trained on massive data sets, learning patterns and features from existing data.  When you use a GenAI tool, it analyses these data sets, and generates new content that resembles what it has learned, much like the predictive text on your phone.

The following video explains how GenAI works and some of the uses and limitations of using GenAI at university.

What you need to know about GenAI tools

While GenAI can be a powerful tool, there are important considerations to keep in mind. Being able to responsibly and ethically use Generative AI is dependent on your critical evaluation skills, much like when you evaluate the results from a Google search or academic database. This means critical thinking skills are essential to evaluate what has been generated.  

  • Accuracy and Authenticity: GenAI tools often produce content that can look or sound convincing, but may be inaccurate, misleading or completely false (often known has AI hallucinations). Always verify the generated content against reliable sources.  

  • Bias and fairness: GenAI tools reflect the biases present in the data they were trained on. This often leads to biased or unfair outputs. It is important to be critical of the results and consider diverse perspectives.  

  • Privacy and Security: Using GenAI tools often involves sharing data. Be mindful of what information you input as it could be added to the tool’s training data. It is also important to consider privacy or data security policies.  

  • Copyright and Plagiarism: Generated content can often infringe on existing copyrights. You are responsible for any AI-generated content that you submit. Content not approved by the unit convener, and/or appropriately referenced, may violate the University’s Assessment Policy.   

For more information, refer to GenAI at UC and GenAI and Ethical Considerations

Types of GenAI tools

The tools listed below are examples of the types of tools available and are not endorsed by the University.

Type  

Purpose  

Potential student uses  

Considerations  

Examples  

Text GenAI  

Composes content from a conversational language model.  

  • Brainstorm and idea generation  

  • Text translation  

  • Create practice quizzes and questions  

  • Summarise difficult texts  

  • Plagiarism risk  

  • Has been known to make up content  

  • Correct citation and referencing needed  

  • Academic integrity is essential - all use must be "permitted and admitted"  

ChatGPT  

Perplexity AI  

Microsoft Copilot

Image GenAI  

Creates images based on learned patterns and styles from text descriptions and prompts.  

  • Source of inspiration and ideas  

  • Create images for presentations  

  • Assist in design elements and choices  

  • Explore and understand visual concepts  

  • Storyboards  

  • Is the content biased or unethical?  

  • Copyright and attribution. Who owns the copyright of the image?  

Dall.E.2  

Stable Diffusion  

Midjourney  

Adobe  

Canva

Microsoft Copilot  

Code GenAI  

Generate or assist in the creation of computer code.  

  • Help with syntax  

  • Assistance with complex coding  

  • Learn different coding patterns and structures  

  • Debug  

  • Stay mindful of AI limitations  

  • Review and test the code before using it  

  • Does it meet standards and security requirements?  

ChatGPT  

CodeT5  

Tabnine  

Sound GenAI  

Generates sounds, music and other auditory content.  

   

  • Create background music for presentations, podcasts, videos and games  

  • Inspiration and creativity  

  • Explore sound design principles  

  • Expression  

  • Copyright issues of content  

  • Appropriateness of content  

AIVA  

Soundful  

Murf.ai  

Video GenAI  

Uses images and text to generate video content.  

  • Add special effects to video  

  • Create graphics for presentations  

  • Edit  

  • Create prototypes  

  • Quality and authenticity  

  • Understand the limitations  

  • Ethical use  

Invideo  

Gen-1 Runway  

Research discovery and explanation GenAI  

Generates content to assist the research process.  

   

  • Summarise large number of research papers  

  • Analyse data sets  

  • Use as a starting point  

  • Validate and verify the generated results through traditional research methods  

  • Information could be inaccurate  

  • The training data may have biases and ethical issues  

Elicit  

Raxter  

Research Rabbit  

Scite  

(Copied from What is generative AI - Generative AI and Assignments - Library Guides at James Cook University (jcu.edu.au) Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International License)