Guidelines
Generative AI (GenAI) tools are now widely available, and many students are using them for coursework and research. The AIDA leadership team has issued the guidance below to BU students for the use of GenAI in their academic work. These guidelines will be revised as GenAI technologies and academic needs evolve. Students are encouraged to consult with their instructors, course policies, and official University channels for periodic updates.
Have a question? View our frequently asked questions page.
1. Critical Embrace of GenAI
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- BU supports the use of GenAI in academic and research settings with sensible guardrails in place: students and faculty are encouraged to use GenAI after educating themselves on GenAI capabilities and being mindful of the benefits and limitations of GenAI. Notably, all GenAI products, including those supported by BU IS&T, often produce false or incorrect statements. Proceed with caution and fact check any GenAI claims.
- Instructors have broad discretion to set rules on how GenAI may or may not be used within each individual course. It is your responsibility to comply with these instructions. Always consult the GenAI policy for the course or ask the instructor before assuming use of GenAI is allowed.
- To broaden the availability of GenAI models across the community, BU is offering all students access to TerrierGPT, a BU-hosted platform that provides initially free access to some of the most widely used GenAI models. We recommend adopting thoughtful personal use strategies that support your work but avoid overreliance on GenAI. Overreliance may affect your ability to perform work independently or to learn and retain critical concepts and methods for future use.
2. Ownership and Transparency
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- You are ultimately responsible for the validity and accuracy of any work you do. GenAI is prone to hallucination, where it offers forth incorrect information authoritatively. Always verify GenAI-assisted outputs, including facts and references.
- Disclose (by a proper reference) when you leverage GenAI tools and describe how you used them in producing your work.
- Submitting GenAI-generated or GenAI-assisted output without attribution is a form of plagiarism that your instructor will treat as an instance of academic misconduct.
3. Privacy and Security
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- Commercial GenAI tools (including paid or plus versions) do not guarantee privacy. Thus, inputting or sharing private or sensitive information through these tools (e.g., work of other students you have been given in confidence, copyrighted class materials, scientific papers you are helping review, unpublished manuscripts) may compromise privacy and violate privacy laws and BU policy.
- For academic use, we recommend TerrierGPT because it protects data and complies with BU privacy policies. However, TerrierGPT is not approved for restricted data (e.g., HIPAA-regulated information).
- Your instructors do not have access to your TerrierGPT sessions and have no means of acquiring such access. BU IS&T personnel do have access to TerrierGPT data, but only on a strict as-needed basis and for complying with state and federal information security laws and enforcement actions. BU IS&T may also leverage aggregate data for platform improvements. BU IS&T will treat individual TerrierGPT session data with the same strict privacy policies that apply to your BU email.
4. Responsible and Constructive Use
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- Use of GenAI for course assignments in ways not permitted by the instructor is a form of academic misconduct. Always indicate where and how GenAI was used to generate content submitted for grading.
- We encourage you to treat GenAI tools as a resource that could potentially help you in studying, discover new information, deepen your understanding, and increase your academic productivity. These tools can be used as an effective personalized tutor and there are prompt designs in place that can establish guardrails consistent with a tutor. Increasingly, BU instructors will be offering GenAI-powered virtual tutors for some of the classes taught.
- As with human tutors and teaching assistants, overreliance on GenAI and asking every single question that comes to mind runs the risk of inhibiting your ability to work independently and with confidence in your abilities. We recommend taking time to seek answers on your own and formulate the most essential questions to ask.
- A GenAI model should not be used as an internet search engine for straightforward, factual inquiries unless the product was specifically designed for web search. Using GenAI models for factual inquiries may lead to inaccurate responses and energy waste. When you have a straightforward, factual inquiry use a search engine instead.
- If you choose to use GenAI, we suggest you become informed about ethical considerations and the environmental impacts of GenAI (which are especially heavy during model training or through intensive use).
Last Revised: July 2025