Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Information Literacy
Learn about how AI works and how to spot common errors AI tools tend to make. You'll also learn fact-checking and critical thinking strategies for AI, how to cite AI in an academic paper, and how to learn more in-depth about AI tools and issues.
While some AI-based tools might come to your mind right away, there are a lot of different tools out there with a lot of different uses. As you evaluate how to use these tools responsibly in your academic work, it is useful to keep the breadth of potential uses in mind. You or your instructor might want to use one kind of tool for a certain situation but not others. Click through the sections below to explore some potential applications of AI. Please note that this list is not comprehensive or an endorsement of any particular tool used in the examples.
Text and Code
Text and Code
Some tools will give you writing or paraphrasing suggestions (e.g. Grammarly, QuillBot), and other tools will generate new text or code based on a prompt from you (e.g. Bing AI, Claude, ChatGPT, Google's Bard).
Text and Code Examples
Grammarly
Bing Chat
Quillbot
Images
Images
Some tools will generate unique images for you, based on a text prompt (e.g. DALL-E, Adobe Firefly, Midjourney).
Images Examples
Prompt: "Testudo at University of Maryland" (Bing Image Creator)
Prompt: "Testudo at University of Maryland in the style of Wes Anderson" (Bing Image Creator)
Prompt: "Child's crayon drawing of Testudo at University of Maryland" (Bing Image Creator)
Video and Audio
Video and Audio
Some tools will use written text to generate spoken language or to create talking video avatars (e.g. Synthesia, PlayHT).
Video and Audio Examples
Synthesia
PlayHT
Research
Research
Some tools will help you find research articles or links (e.g. Bing AI, Elicit).