University of Central Florida AI Policy

Students should look to individual syllabi for guidance on how, when, and if AI use is permitted. If no policy is stated, students should seek clarification from the instructor rather than make assumptions about acceptable use.

The intentional use of AI-assisted tools for any element of a work or school product must be disclosed (example: “an outline of topics for this work were generated by Copilot with Enterprise Data Protection, March 7, 2025”). Use of AI that is embedded within larger software (e.g., predictive text sentence completions, auto-correct, spell check, etc.), does not need to be disclosed.

Students who fraudulently represent AI output as their work are committing plagiarism.

AI should be considered as a way to complement students’ creativity and intellectual capabilities, but not a replacement for their own critical thinking. The most effective approach positions AI as a “thought partner” that challenges, extends, and enhances student thinking rather than substituting for it.

Students are responsible for the accuracy of the work they submit, whether AI assistance was employed or not.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) for writing (including CoPilot and ChatGPT) can quickly create coherent, cohesive prose and paragraphs on a seemingly limitless set of topics. The potential for abuse in academic integrity is clear, and our students are using these tools already. There are similar AI tools for creating images, computer code, and many other domains.

Students should look to individual syllabi for guidance on how, when, and if AI use is permitted. If no policy is stated, students should seek clarification from the instructor rather than make assumptions about acceptable use.

Like all UCF stakeholders, UCF faculty must ensure their use of AI for research is ethical, responsible, fair, transparent, and disclosed.

The potential use of AI tools in any part of the publication process is not universally accepted. Faculty should check with individual publishers regarding policies of AI use and/or disclosure.

Similarly, the use of AI tools for grant-writing is not universally accepted, and faculty will need to make case-by-case decisions. This includes the use of AI tools to write, summarize, augment, lengthen, or shorten grant applications.

Pending copyright and patent materials should not be made public via AI tools, nor is it always safe to use AI to assist with grant writing.

Researchers are responsible for the protection of research data; the use of AI to analyze or report on research data should be performed carefully only via enterprise-level platform access to ensure data integrity and data security, and to avoid data sharing with or data use by those platforms.

Sensitive materials include markers of identification such as Network IDs (NIDs), employee numbers, social security numbers, grades in class and other FERPA-protected materials, HIPAA-protected materials, export-controlled materials, sensitive or federally-protected research data, and intellectual property associated with UCF.

Uploading or pasting materials to a public AI model should be considered the same as making the materials public on the Internet or social media. For this reason, you should not only avoid uploading or pasting UCF sensitive data, but also avoid uploading or pasting sensitive data owned by third parties, such as copyrighted material, patents, research data, etc.

Like all UCF stakeholders, UCF faculty must ensure their use of AI for research is ethical, responsible, fair, transparent, and disclosed.

Similarly, the use of AI tools for grant-writing is not universally accepted, and faculty will need to make case-by-case decisions.

Some grant and publication organizations prohibit the use of AI when writing critiques, reviews, or acceptance/denial decisions. Faculty should seek clarification about whether AI tools are permitted on a case-by-case basis.

The intentional use of AI-assisted tools for any element of a work or school product must be disclosed (example: “an outline of topics for this work were generated by Copilot with Enterprise Data Protection, March 7, 2025”). Use of AI that is embedded within larger software (e.g., predictive text sentence completions, auto-correct, spell check, etc.), does not need to be disclosed.

Disclosing the use of grammar assistance is not centrally mandated for students, but may depend on individual faculty policy.

Faculty are advised to avoid using AI detectors. They are not reliable and can generate convincing-looking false positives and false negatives. Further, research indicates that students writing in a non-native language are disproportionately likely to be unjustly accused of AI use.

Currently, UCF has an account with turnitin.com to identify student plagiarism.

Keep in mind that tools exist that can automate paraphrasing for students (example: Quillbot.com), so turnitin.com may not catch all plagiarism.

Like all UCF stakeholders, UCF faculty must ensure their use of AI for teaching is ethical, responsible, fair, transparent, and disclosed.

Grading accomplished only through AI, with no human review, is not ethical and should be avoided.

Like all UCF stakeholders, UCF staff and administrators must ensure their use of AI is ethical, responsible, fair, transparent, and disclosed.

Staff have access to sensitive University data and must be extra vigilant not to expose proprietary data, student records, and other sensitive information to unsecured AI. De-identifying data is always preferred before exposing it to AI, even within the protections afforded with Copilot.

There is no single “AI Policy” at UCF. Instead, several existing policies apply to the use of AI.

UCF’s contracted AI platform is Microsoft Copilot for web (or its corresponding mobile app). Users of this platform, when signed in with a UCF NID under the “work or school” account type, are offered enterprise data protection. This means neither the query nor the AI output are communicated back to Microsoft, and neither of them train the model. That said, it is recommended best practice to de-identify queries, uploads, and pastes to any AI platform, even when using the protected Copilot.

Existing UCF policies on data privacy and security continue to apply to AI and emerging technology tools.

All software purchases by departments, faculty, and staff must be vetted by IT before the purchase is made, if the software is to have access to sensitive UCF data. This includes subscriptions to AI tools with access to sensitive UCF data, whether paid by procurement or expense card.

Uploading or pasting materials to a public AI model should be considered the same as making the materials public on the Internet or social media. For this reason, you should not only avoid uploading or pasting UCF sensitive data, but also avoid uploading or pasting sensitive data owned by third parties, such as copyrighted material, patents, research data, etc. PDFs obtained through the UCF Libraries are copyrighted and should not be uploaded.

There is not, as yet, a Policy specifically about artificial intelligence.

The Responsible Use principles above were developed and written without AI assistance. Groups that assisted in fine-tuning these principles include UCF IT, UCF Libraries, UCF Center for Ethics, Center for Distributed Learning, Faculty Center for Teaching & Learning, Faculty Senate IT Committee, Office of Research, and several groups and coordinators exploring AI at departmental or College levels.