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University of Texas University of Texas Libraries

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Generative AI Tools

Large Language Models (LLMs)

Website: https://copilot.microsoft.com/

Uses: generates text, code, and images using ChatGPT and DALL-E. Includes links to some web resources.

Licensing: Licensed by UT

Access: website - log in with your UT Microsoft 365 account (@austin.utexas.edu) and then your EID to access the UT-Austin licensed version of CoPilot. 

Company: Microsoft

Cost/Upgrade Version: Free through UT

User Privacy:  When using CoPilot licensed through UT, your prompts and responses are not retained by Microsoft or used to train AI models, and your information is encrypted. It is not currently approved for use with confidential university data (e.g., FERPA, HIPAA, PCI, IRB).

Additional information: see the UT Microsoft 365 AI page.

Websitehttps://chatgpt.com

Uses: generates text, code and images.

Licensing: Proprietary

Access: web, iOS, Android

Company: OpenAI

Cost/Upgrade Version:  Basic tier is free and no account is needed. Upraded version is available for $20/month and requires a user account with OpenAI.

User Privacy:  OpenAI Privacy Policy (for non-European users) and OpenAI Privacy Policy (for EU)
Will collect personal information and provide information to partners, in addition to analysis of user behavior.

Model Training Set: Trained using the Common Crawl open dataset in addition to resources like Wikipedia, books, and news articles.

Website: https://gemini.google.com/

Uses: Generates text, code and images. Includes links to some web sources.

Licensing: Proprietary; not licensed by UT

Access:  Google Gemini website and through Google app integrations. Formerly known as Bard.

Company: Google

Cost/Upgrade: Basic tier is free but requires Google account. Does not work with @utexas Google accounts but does work with @gmail accounts. Upgraded version (Gemini Advanced) costs $19.99/month as of August 2024 and offers further integration within Google apps, 2 TB storage, priority access for new features, and other premium features.

Licensing: Proprietary; not licensed by UT

Privacy:  Gemini Apps Privacy Hub; Uses location, past conversation data to provide responses. Will save and share data with other Google products if linked.

 

Website:  https://llama.meta.com/ or https://meta.ai

Uses: generates text, code and images. 

Access:   Use it immediately through Meta AI or download Llama and deploy locally

Company: Meta 

Cost/Upgrade:  Free

Licensing: Llama is open with some restrictions (https://github.com/faceboksearch/llama/blob/main/LICENSE); not licensed by UT

Privacy:  Meta Privacy Policy- Requires submission of name and email in order to download the model. Once downloaded, the model can then be run locally without sharing data.

Model Training Set: Trained with data sources similar to those of other LLMs, but only those with publicly available data that are “compatible with open sourcing”. See https://arxiv.org/pdf/2302.13971.pdf for full details on training data and list of data sources.

 

 

 A more exhaustive list of generative AI tools that may be of interest to university students and faculty is maintained by Ithaka S+R at https://sr.ithaka.org/our-work/generative-ai-product-tracker/

AI Literature Search, Synthesis, and Visualization Tools

Website: https://elicit.com/

Uses: literature searching, data extraction from PDFs, summarizes individual papers using LLMs, synthesize results from multiple papers to create an overall summary

Company: Elicit

Cost/Upgrade Version: Free version provides basic services. Two paid tiers provide increased functionality.

User Privacy:  Will collect personal information and provide information to partners, in addition to analysis of user behavior. See more information on their privacy statement.

Additional Information: Like all LLM summaries, the output draws from a limited scope of information and has a tendency to contain biases. All summaries should be read critically and should not be viewed as a total replacement of engaging with the literature. The focus of Elicit is predominantly on synthesizing empirical research. Is not the best fit for humanities research. Articles gathered from Semantic Scholar.

Website: https://consensus.app/

Uses: literature searching, provides a "consensus meter" of how the results align with your question (yes, maybe, no), summarizes individual papers using LLMs, synthesize results from multiple papers to create an overall summary

Company: Union Square Ventures

Cost/Upgrade Version: Free version provides limited services. Paid tiers provide increased functionality and increased access.

User Privacy:  Will collect personal information and provide information to partners, in addition to analysis of user behavior. See more information on their privacy statement.

Additional Information: Like all LLM summaries, the output draws from a limited scope of information and has a tendency to contain biases. All summaries should be read critically and should not be viewed as a total replacement of engaging with the literature. The focus of Consensus is predominantly on synthesizing empirical research. Is not the best fit for humanities research. Articles gathered from Semantic Scholar. 

Website: https://www.researchrabbit.ai/

Uses: Literature mapping - i.e. tracking citations to create a "map" of citations affiliated with a paper. Also provides citations for similar work. 

Company: Research Rabbit

Cost/Upgrade Version: Free to use.

User Privacy:  Will collect personal information and provide information to partners, in addition to analysis of user behavior. See more information on their privacy statement.

Additional Information: Articles gathered from Semantic Scholar & PubMed.

Website: https://inciteful.xyz/

Uses: Literature mapping - i.e. tracking citations to create a "map" of citations affiliated with a paper. Also provides citations for similar work. Ranks affiliated papers by "importance" using PageRank scores.

Company: Inciteful

Cost/Upgrade Version: Free to use.

User Privacy:  At the time of writing, Inciteful does not have a published privacy statement. Based on similar products, one would assume that they will collect personal information and provide information to partners, in addition to analysis of user behavior.

Additional Information: Articles gathered from Semantic Scholar, Open Alex, Crossref, & Open Citations.

AI Tools for Audio, Image and Video Generation

  • Stable Diffusion: Generates images, video and audio. Free and paid versions. Available to download and run locally, or use online through Stable Assistant. 
  • Midjourney: Generates images and video in Discord and on the Web. Requires a paid subscription.
  • Dall-e: text to image generator from OpenAI. Incorporated into Microsoft CoPilot.
  • Sora: text to video generator from OpenAI that was released for broader use in December 2024. Available through the ChatGPT Plus subscription which provides basic functionality and with expanded capabilities available for ChatGPT Pro users.

AI Coding Tools

  • GitHub Copilot: generate and optimize code in many programming languages. Free and paid subscriptions available.
  • Code Llama: generate and optimize code in many programming languages. Available for free.

Generative AI in Library Databases and Search Tools

As we consider how to engage with AI, it is important to understand that it appears in many tools used to do research. In some cases, you have to opt in and in others, it appears automatically.

Faculty and instructors should consider this when creating policies and guidelines about AI for their courses.

Selected library databases:

  • JSTOR: AI generated summaries of articles are available in beta and users can request to participate in this beta version of JSTOR.

  • Statistia: a featured called Research AI is available from the search page.

  • Worldcat: a book recommender is available when you view the record for an item.

Increasingly, other library vendors are incorporating generative AI features into their tools so we expect this list to grow.

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