FAQ: Can Generative AI (Artificial Intelligence) provide a list of sources based on my topic?

What is Generative AI?

ChatGPT is an example generative text artificial intelligence (AI) tool developed by OpenAI and launched in November 2022. Other tools include Consensus  https://consensus.app/ This link opens in a new window and Elicit  https://elicit.com/ This link opens in a new window.

How Generative AI works

• Generative AI does NOT work like Google or the library databases.
• It does not search the Internet or the scholarly journals in the library.
• It learns using a snapshot of massive amounts of training data taken from the Internet from time to time.

Generative AI and Reference Credibility

• Prompting AI to locate sources about your research topic will generate a list of references that may seem like legitimate citations to articles.
• AI references might be "hallucinations" and not even exist as published research. While hallucinations do happen on occasion, not all AI is equally prone to inventing sources.
• Some references provided by AI may exist because they were included in the training data, but no distinction is made between real and made-up citations in the list generated.
• AI is answering the prompt with what it thinks are examples of sources relevant to your research topic.

Content authored by: AG/CD