University guidance on GenAI for research
Read about how Research Support staff at Liverpool are using GenAI in their practice.
Uses of AI in the Research Support team
- Support for grant writing – though please do check your funding body’s policies and guidelines as most now will have their own policies on AI use
- Creating first drafts of letters of support from collaborating partners
- To suggest structures of, and illustrative topics for, generic sections such as project management or risk management
- To extract relevant information from documents such as the University and government strategy documents
- Summarising key points of a specific research paper.
Wider use cases
- Identifying funding opportunities and matching applicants
- Finding partners and collaborators
- Writing bids: drafting, reviewing, editing, rewording
- Refining budgets and aligning to policies
- Allocating internal peer reviewers
- General admin: emails, meeting agendas, note taking.
Unacceptable uses of generative AI in research
- Submitting AI-generated text as original research or including unverified AI outputs in publications
- Uploading unpublished research data, confidential grant proposals, or participant information to public AI tools
- Inputting sensitive or personal data, without consent, ethical approval or without seeking advice from the University’s Data Protection Officer
- Using AI to fabricate data, references, or results
- Relying solely on AI for systematic literature reviews or meta-analyses without human validation
- Using AI that violates publishers’ or funders’ policies on acceptable uses of AI.
When using generative AI tools, researchers must carefully consider bias, misinformation, data privacy, sustainability, transparency, intellectual property rights, copyright law, and hallucinations on a case-by-case basis to ensure the integrity and ethical use of information. Addressing these factors safeguards both research integrity and public trust.
Please read the golden rules and the legal, security and data protection pages for principles of generative AI use that also covers research.
You may also find UKRI’s policy on the use of generative AI in grant preparation and assessment useful.