Questions
Can faculty upload student coursework to generative AI tools?
Can faculty use generative AI tools to check for plagiarism and/or AI usage?
What if I remove all student data and personally-identifiable information?
Answer
As a general rule, avoid uploading coursework to any artificial intelligence (AI) service. Anything you give to an AI service you should expect it to then own and use how it sees fit. Many AI services’ terms and conditions state that you grant them full and perpetual rights to modify, display, create derivative works from, and distribute your content publicly.
Faculty may not upload student coursework to AI tools, even if student data and personally-identifiable information is removed. Pursuant to Minnesota State Board Policy 3.26 Intellectual Property, students own their student works. Student works may not be used without documented student consent. As an example, your top-secret brownie recipe may not have any student information. However, once you give that recipe to an AI service, that service can then give it out to the next person that asks how to make great brownies. Similarly with student works, if you upload a writing passage or an image, you’ve then given that over to the AI service. It may give you or the student great advice on how to make it better, but it can also use that work to generate content for others.
Faculty cannot use unapproved software to check for plagiarism, including generative AI tools. Currently, there are no approved AI detection services or plagiarism detection services available to the campus. Uploading student work to such services is not approved.
Microsoft Office features a Similarity tool which reviews Word documents for similarity to online sources. Read more about this Microsoft Word feature here.
Reach out to SCSU Online to discuss how to manage the risk of using AI tools in your course.