AI tools can generate text, images, and other media very quickly. Since a central goal of this course is to help you become independent and critical thinkers, you are discouraged from using AI tools to create text, video, audio, or images that end up in your work (assignments, activities, responses, etc). However, its use is becoming common in many areas, and detecting it is not always easy. Note that while AI can be good for summarizing and outlining, it will generally not get you very far with the kinds of writing assignments in this course, and it's hard to imagine a wholly AI-generated paper getting into the A-range, and maybe not far into the B-range either. Basically, it's not good at generating original thoughts, and will never be able to compete with your own ideas in a meaningful way.

All that said, since the "fun stuff" assignment for this class and the final project are meant to be enjoyable and creative, it might be interesting to see what AI comes up with in the world of Old English, so maybe mess around. If you do use ChatGPT or a similar tool in any way, you must acknowledge it in your work as you would any other source.

A couple of fun facts about ChatGPT and the other major chatbots:

The data set ends in September 2021. After that, it knows nothing! Not so relevant for early British Literature perhaps, but good to know.
Any information, data, or text that you enter into a system like this immediately becomes owned by the data company.

If any part of this is confusing or uncertain, please reach out to me for a conversation before submitting your work. The Center for Teaching Excellence has an excellent pageLinks to an external site. with facts and guidelines about AI usage. This is aimed at teachers, but browsing it will be good for your AI literacy as we experience this major technological shift together.