This website was written and is maintained by members of the Durham Centre for Academic Development at Durham University.
Generative AI is a rapidly-moving topic. We are doing our best to keep up this site to date and to share our findings, but inevitably there will be some areas where the technology (and eventually the legislation) has temporarily leapt ahead of us. This is particularly true with screenshots and videos as developers frequently make changes to the tools’ interfaces.
Generative AI is a topic where people often adopt very polarised positions – either generative AI is a skill that everyone needs to immediately focus on or else they will be replaced/unemployable; or equally, that it is the work of the Devil and something that should be avoided at all costs; We are trying to take a more measured approach in this blog. We think there are positives to the technology, but there are also risks.
We try to make our content as widely applicable as possible, but if you are wondering about using generative AI in a work or education context, you should always check with your employer, school, college or university to understand their specific approach and regulations.
If you are a student working on an assessment, then the instructions provided with that assessment by your institution take precedence over anything written here – even if it advocates an approach that we disagree with.
Images
The images in this blog are a mix of real imagery and AI-generated ones. We often edit the output of AI-generated images to improve them. We are trying to follow the advice of the Better Images of AI report and avoid adding to the many misleading stereotypes of AI.
Text
The original text in this blog has been written by humans, not generative AI, however Generative AI may have been used to check for spelling, punctuation and grammar.
Link to generative AI tools
We have tried to illustrate our discussions with reference to actual generative AI tools. Where possible we have added links to these so you can explore them yourself. These are not an endorsement of any tool or the ethics of the company behind them. Before creating accounts, parting with money or uploading these your data, we strongly advise you to take advice from people at your school, work or institution.
Contributors
The work is shaped by our interactions with Durham staff, students and the general public. As such it benefits greatly from and includes their suggestions, insights, ideas.
The two main site authors are listed below:
Paul Finley
Digital Education Advisor
Paul has delivered over 100 generative AI workshops to staff and students at the University. He also runs a termly AI update session.
Dr Malcolm Murray
Head of Digital Education
Malcolm was invited to help draft Durham’s initial response to generative AI and has never stopped.