Resource

Description, privacy and access

Comments

General generative AI tools

Microsoft CoPilot

Easiest and best, way to access this as a QMU student or staff member is through the Microsoft Edge browser - you can sign into that with your QMU credentials.

Uses ChatGPT4 but as QMU credentials can be used it provides a more anonymous access route for students/staff.

Using CoPilot in this way is free.

Potentially less hallucination than ChatGPT, particularly with good prompting e.g. ‘good scientific evidence’ ‘scientific articles’ etc.

Open model drawing in information from across the internet - more open to error and bias than a closed model.

Commercial Data Protection (A3 & A5 licenses)

Data not used for model training

No access to ChatGPT features like GPTs

No access for under 18s

No chat history

Anthropic Claude

An open model drawing on information from across the internet. Has some powerful features for working with images.

Requires you to create an account to be able to use it. Privacy would be a little more of a concern with using QMU credentials on this platform.

Free and paid versions.

Free version is likely to be one release behind the current best release.

An 'artefacts' feature allowing interactive creation of certain visual outputs such as diagrams and websites.

No access to the internet.

Limited free access.

Google Gemini

Gemini is an open model drawing on information from across the internet. Google account required. Free and paid versions.

Gemini has been the clearest in its answers that it cannot provide medical advice/guidance.

Multimodal (images and text)

Access to the internet

'Double-check response' feature

No corporate-level data protection features

Data used for model training

No access to under 18s

Academic focused generative AI tools

Research Rabbit

Requires you to create an account to use it. Fewer privacy concerns, however individuals signing up should ensure they are comfortable doing so. Free to use.

It is a powerful tool for seeing connections between papers but does not provide a context for the connection.

The added extra on cited referencing searching is being able to look at connections between authors in the same way.

Scite.ai

A tool that looks at the connections between papers through citations. It applies a context to these links by highlighting what type of item the citation appears in, where the citation appears and whether the citation is a mention, is supportive or is contrasting.

Requires you to create an account to use it. Gives you 5 uses free before you must subscribe to use it.

Has an institutional subscription option and one that is used in universities currently.

Can help with assessing the quality of the papers, however it still requires the user to apply their own judgement.

Assistant by Scite.ai

A feature that currently comes with a subscription to scite.ai. Assistant is a generative AI tool that works on a closed model of academic papers.

Assistant will provide answers to a range of questions based on the papers it has available to it.

It provides citations for its answers.

Elicit

Elicit requires you to create an account to be able to use it.

Gives you 5000 credits when you sign up allowing some free use. When those credits are used you need to subscribe to use it further.

Can extract data from PDFs - can provide summaries, details of main findings, methodology information and lots more from academic papers in a table format.

You can keep up to date with the generative AI products available on Ithaka S+R's product tracker page.

Acknowledgement: Table compiled by Ken Dick, QMU Library Services Manager (Last updated 8 April 2024). Additional information from Attewell, S. (2024) Jisc HE generative AI literacy definition. Available at: https://nationalcentreforai.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2024/07/23/he-generative-ai-literacy-definition/ (Accessed: 23 July 2024).