AI Use in Dissertations, Theses and Capstones

Each program's AI policy for dissertations, theses and capstones must uphold the University at Buffalo's exceptional academic standards. Policies must ensure that our graduate students create new knowledge through original research. Simultaneously, policies must be discipline-specific, addressing the appropriate and allowable use of AI tools in the relevant professional field.

The Graduate School does not have a campus-wide policy regarding the permissibility of AI use in academic work. However, we encourage faculty to create positive AI use policies for graduate programs that clearly articulate both acceptable uses of AI as a sophisticated research tool and unacceptable uses that may violate academic integrity and prohibit the creation of indepedent, original work.

Departments are encouraged to foster faculty discourse on a wide range of topics as you develop your policies, including:

• UB Academic Integrity Policy.
• Professional organization and granting agency guidelines regarding use of artificial intelligence.
• Journal requirements for AI usage and disclosure for publications.
• Employer expectations about AI skillsets for program graduates as they enter the job market.

• Acceptable uses and unacceptable uses for tasks such as: brainstorming ideas; generating research questions; surveying relevant literature and methodologies; editing original writing; data analysis; etc.
• Confidentiality concerns with uploading information that may become part of that AI model's data stores.
• Committee roles and responsibilities in approving AI use specific to individual students' research.
• Disclosure requirements for AI use in the written work such as descriptions of sources and use for each; documentation of prompts used in each tool; etc.

Resources are available to assist departments with the development of program policies on AI use in dissertations, theses and capstones.

• The Office of Curriculum, Assessment and Teaching Transformation (CATT) is actively developing resources to support faculty as they integrate AI into their teaching. New resources will be available in January 2026.
• University Libraries Subject Librarians can point chairs and directors of programs to the AI policies that exist in various professional organizations and highlight example policies from peer institutions. It should be noted that the Subject Librarian role is to guide departments to the resources they need to inform and write graduate program policies. Subject Librarians are not legal or ethical experts and will not be involved in the policy writing process.
• University Libraries has published an AI Integrity Policies web library guide that provides references to AI integrity policies from various professional organizations and peer institutions along with common language found in course, departmental and university-wide AI integrity policies.