The rate of change in AI is currently rapid and much of our current understanding, including the tools and their use cases, will be outdated in a matter of weeks. Although it is impossible to accurately predict where the technology is going, it is reasonable to assume AI will be able to generate more realistic and diverse content, such as images, videos, texts, sounds and even code. This may enable new forms of creativity, entertainment, education and communication. However, it will also pose ever-greater ethical challenges in areas such as deepfakes and plagiarism.
Information on the approved AI tools that are available through the University Group can be found on the AI Tooling Hub.
What kinds of AI tools are out there?
There has been an explosion of AI tools in recent months, and therefore providing an exhaustive list would be impossible. However, these are some of the most common:
○ ChatGPT
○ Google Bard
○ Bing Chat
Uses:
○ Providing academic and administrative support to students, such as answering course-related questions or assisting with enrolment processes.
○ Offering personalised career guidance to students, such as recommending job opportunities based on their skills and interests.
○ Jasper
○ Quillbot
○ Grammarly
Uses:
○ Enhancing student writing skills by providing real-time feedback on grammar, syntax, and clarity.
○ Streamlining the process of creating academic content, such as research papers or dissertations, by offering suggestions on organization and formatting.
○ DALL·E 2
○ Midjourney
○ Stable diffusion
○ Adobe Firefly
Uses:
○ Providing visual aids for academic presentations, such as graphs or diagrams, based on text-based input.
○ Creating customised visual content for marketing materials, such as social media posts or advertisements.
○ Whisper
○ Caption.Ed
Uses:
○ Making video content accessible to all students, including those with hearing impairments, by generating accurate closed captions.
○ Assisting with note-taking during lectures by providing real-time transcriptions of the spoken content.
○ Murf.ai
○ Synthesys
Uses:
○ Offering a new way to create educational content, such as podcasts or lectures, by generating synthetic speech from text input.
○ Enhancing the accessibility of audio content, such as audiobooks or podcasts, by creating a synthetic voice for those who are unable to record their own.
○ GitHub Copilot
○ ChatGPT (although its primary use is as an LLM chatbot (see above), ChatGPT can be used as a programming/development assistant)
Uses:
○ Assisting with the testing and debugging of code, such as by identifying common errors or suggesting improvements to code structure.
○ Streamlining the process of software development by automating routine tasks, such as generating boilerplate code or creating documentation.
For further advice on embedding AI into the Higher Education curriculum proceed to the article below:
AI tools and the impact on Higher Education
Article authors
David Ashworth & Martin Jenkins
