Your doctoral dissertation is the crowning achievement of your grad school career: After years of courses and qualifying exams, lab or field work, teaching, conferences, and the deepest possible dive into a sea of secondary literature, you're ready to establish your place in the field with an original contribution to the scholarship. You've come too far to be derailed by allegations that your dissertation is the product of artificial intelligence.

AI and the Dissertation

New AI systems like ChatGPT, Jasper, Bard, Bing, and others promise to make research and writing projects of all kinds faster and easier. Grad students working on their dissertations might prompt an AI platform to perform basic research tasks, compile and interpret data, generate outlines, or even write all or parts of the chapters.

At the most high-pressure, high-stakes point in the graduate school process, AI assistance is tempting. A good dissertation will launch you professionally by providing the material for some of your first publications and setting the agenda for your post-doctoral career. A failed dissertation, conversely, is almost too awful to contemplate: All those years living on student wages, focused on a single purpose—years you didn't spend building a career, earning grown-up money, and starting a 401k.

AI could make dissertation writing easier for stressed-out grad students with much to gain and much to lose. (Whether it makes the product better is debated.) It could also, in some cases, defeat the whole purpose of the dissertation, which is original scholarship. No wonder university faculty and administrators are looking for it everywhere.

Accused of Using AI on the Dissertation

If you've been accused of using AI on your dissertation, you've got another project ahead of you: Getting a clear picture of the allegations and squaring them against your university's AI-use policies.

First, don't rely on fraught discussions in your advisor's office for your information. Instead, insist on a formal, written charge specifying how, in its understanding, you used AI for your dissertation. Is it alleging that you relied on a generative AI program for:

• Research?
• Analysis?
• Outlining?
• Citation generation?
• Writing?

For each and any of these, the school also needs to identify the extent of the AI usage, in its opinion.

Evaluate these charges against your process on the dissertation. Locate and organize the evidence that disproves these charges, including notes and drafts. Ask the school to share the evidence it's using as a basis for the charge.

Next, it's the school's job to demonstrate that the specific AI uses it's alleging are in violation of codified school policy. Review the university's Code of Conduct to see if the uses you're accused of are in fact prohibited: AI is evolving so rapidly that such policies are often incomplete, inconsistent, and full of gaps.

Defending Yourself Against the Allegations

A successful case against you for violating your university's AI-use policy could be devastating, given how much you've invested to get to the dissertation stage and how much you've given up. Don't try to handle your defense on your own.

The Student Defense Team at the Lento Law Firm can help. They've worked with hundreds of students accused of a range of academic misconduct over the years, and will know how to help you reach the most favorable possible outcome. Contact the Lento team before responding to any allegations for advice and guidance by calling us at 888.535.3686 or visiting us online.