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GenAI types and tools

If you are looking for information about using GenAI in research and teaching, go to the Generative AI in Research and Teaching guide. 

GenAI tools are evolving incredibly quickly and their impact within education is significant and ongoing. When appropriate and permitted, GenAI tools can be used in many ways to support your study or research including creating content, exploring ideas or synthesising information.

There are numerous types of GenAI that can create music, art, video, text, code, equations or even a blend of these. HiQ Virtual and the Digital Workplace offer a list of QUT-endorsed tools with AI functionality. Using non-endorsed AI tools can expose the university’s data or personal information to the public. 

When using these tools you must consider copyright, intellectual property and data security. For advice on what you are allowed to input into a GenAI tool, refer to the Using GenAI with integrity page in HiQ.

Many library database agreements also contain clauses around the use of AI, so please read the QUT Library Databases and search tools conditions of use to understand your obligations. By connecting to and using Library subscribed databases, online journals, videos and ebooks you agree to:

  • Not input or upload content to any sites or tools (GenAI included) that may distribute the information to another person, unless allowed by the vendor.

Examples of GenAI and associated tools

 Note: Image generated using Microsoft Copilot, 2024 (https://copilot.microsoft.com/)

GenAI analyses the text from books, articles, and websites that it is trained on to find patterns and relationships in human language. Once it is trained, it can create new text based on an understanding of human language.

Microsoft Copilot is an AI-powered digital assistant that aims to provide personalised assistance to users. It incorporates ChatGPT with the Microsoft Office environment and is available to QUT staff and students. 

ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a GenAI chatbot that has been developed by OpenAI. It is an example of a Large Language Model (LLM) that uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to generate content in a conversational tone. 

Possible uses of these tools:

  • Provide feedback on the quality of writing, grammar, spelling and coherence. Can also suggest improvements to layout, structure, phrasing and sentence structure.
  • Summarise large amounts of information, including class or research notes.
  • Produce practice tests with a variety of question styles. 
  • Help overcome the "fear of a blank page" by providing stimulus or generating ideas to extend and develop.
  • Assist with time organisation. 

Limitations: 

  • Sources are not referenced or cited and you are unable to see how it reached the answer.
  • Can provide incorrect information with certainty (known as hallucinations).
  • May be too generic or contain biases.
  • Can misinterpret the given prompt. 
  • Copyright and data security considerations around input of material. 

GenAI image tools can produce diverse images in a range of mediums, everything from photorealistic oil painting style to anime.   

Adobe Firefly and Creative Cloud are endorsed for use at QUT. 

Other options, not QUT-endorsed, include Stable Diffusion which is an AI art generator that enables users to create unique imagery from short text descriptions, also known as prompts.

DALL·E 2 is an AI system that enables users to create images and art from a text description in natural language.

Possible uses: 

  • Create unique images for presentations.
  • Turn concepts into images with little to no artistic ability or experience.
  • Can provide creative inspiration. 

Limitations: 

  • Unknown copyright implications if copyrighted works from other artists were used to train the model.
  • Quality of images can vary. 
  • Making changes to an image can be difficult. 

Importantly, these models inherit the bias of their training datasets. For example, the prompt 'a doctor' using Canva's text to image tools resulted in four pictures of older white males in white lab coats. 

Note: Image generated using Canva, 2023 (https://www.canva.com/en_au/)

There are many GenAI tools that claim to automate parts of the research process and make long, complex texts easier to decipher. This type of AI often analyses research papers that users upload to extract key information or summarise a paper. they can also help with literature review mapping and citation. 

Elicit is an AI research assistant that uses machine learning to help automate parts of the research workflow. It can find relevant papers without perfect keyword matches, and summarise and extract key information from the papers.

Scite is a platform that helps researchers discover and evaluate scientific articles using Smart Citations. Smart Citations show the context and the classification of how a publication has been cited by other publications, whether it provides supporting or contrasting evidence for the cited claim.

Enago Read and genei can summarise PDFs and web pages and extract keywords. 

Possible uses:

  • Compare and evaluate how you have interpreted a research paper.
  • Locate other research papers that might relate to your topic.
  • Summarise papers and extract keywords.

Limitations:

  • Can provide incorrect information with certainty (known as hallucinations).
  • Can provide inaccurate analysis or evaluation of a research paper.
  • Might miss relevant papers or words. 
  • License agreements around the use of copyrighted material may prevent you from uploading resources. Always read the database terms and conditions. 

Creating video content is time-consuming. You need a script or lyrics, recordings and then you need to edit. There are generative AI video programs that have been trained on some or all of these elements allowing you to control what is created. 

Some examples of generative AI that can create audio content include AIVA, Soundful and Murf.ai.

Some examples of generative AI that can create videos include Gen-1 Runway and Invideo.

Learning to code is similar to learning a language, and can be just as hard. Instead of searching the internet for help when coders get stuck, GenAI models can now be used to help with generating and improving code or even finding errors. 

This means that you could use a tool like GitHub Actions to reformat new code to match old, instead of spending hours manually formatting it yourself; or even build a complete website with no coding experience. But beware, it'll likely come at a cost. 

Some examples of generative AI that can create code include ChatGPT, CodeT5 and Tabnine.

  • Last Updated: Nov 6, 2024 9:42 AM
  • URL: https://libguides.library.qut.edu.au/genai
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Tags: AI, artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, Generative AI