Statement on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Language Models

George Fox University is committed to Christian faith integration and powerful learning outcomes for students—thinking, writing, learning, and communicating. We believe education is conducive to our flourishing as beings created in the image of God. At some points, artificial intelligence tools (AI) should play a role in this learning journey; at other points, they should not. Wisdom and discernment about the words and content we create remain important individually and in the community.

Students are encouraged to experiment and use AI tools in the same way that they might responsibly use the internet generally or other types of software. If an instructor explicitly states—in their syllabus, or as written instructions to the class on an assignment or exam—that the use of AI is allowed or encouraged for a particular element of a course, then that instructor’s directions are a student’s authoritative guide.

Lacking this instructor's encouragement or permission, however, or with no other guidance, for assignments, exams, essays, or any other graded or ungraded work, the use of AI tools to achieve learning outcomes in a course is not permitted at George Fox University. If for whatever reason a student does use AI tools to generate responses, phrases, outlines, text, images, or any other content, the student must still disclose that fact and cite the AI program they use; failure to do so is plagiarism and will be treated formally as academic dishonesty, according to the Academic Handbook. In general, the unauthorized use of generative AI shall be treated analogously to forbidden assistance from another person or disallowed resource, digital or otherwise (and thus would be forbidden under the same circumstances as any other form of academic dishonesty).

Similarly, the George Fox University expectation for students applying for admission to any university degree or non-degree program, activity, scholarship, or any other formal university-related programming is that all written work is a student's own—i.e., not the product of an AI language tool. If or when students do persist in using AI language tools to compose such materials, again, they must formally acknowledge that use. Students who use AI language tools instead of their own voice, ideas, and writing for application to university programs or scholarships (regardless of whether or not they disclose such use) may be rejected based on that AI use according to this policy.

The types of materials that would fall under the category of "AI," "AI language tools" or "AI language models" for this purpose include but are not limited to, websites like ChatGPT, Bard, Claude, GitHub, Copy.ai, Rephrase.ai, and many more, as well as the text-generative aspects of popular tools such as (but again, not limited to) Grammarly, i.e., GrammarlyGO. In other cases, programs such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs may use spelling and grammar suggestions, and for this purpose, we are not considering that use to be "generative AI" or an "AI language tool" that might be forbidden under this policy. Students should acknowledge the use of generative AI and default to disclosing such assistance when in doubt.

General guidelines for students:

• Exercise responsibility for the content you create and stay engaged in the process (with or without AI).
• Check for instructor permission about AI use (related to learning outcomes of class activities/assignments).
• Where permission exists, make sure to disclose any use of AI for class activities or assignments (by formal citation, less formal attribution, and/or a framing statement as appropriate).

For a video review of the University-approved citation practice for students concerning AI tools, see here (on YouTube).

Some language here is adopted from Stanford University's Office of Community Standards.