LibGuides: ChatGPT, AI, and Information Literacy: Advice for Students

How Does it Work?

What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?
A clear but thorough explanation of how ChatGPT works from Stephen Wolfram, February 2023

Please consider the following

Before you use ChatGPT or other AI for your coursework, consider the ways that it might lead to academic misconduct accusations or poor outcomes.

When considering using an AI tool for your research project:

Talk to your instructor as to whether or not AI usage is alllowed for your creative, written or research assignments
Check your course syllabus for an AI Classroom Policy
Familiarize yourself with the college's policy on plagiarism
Remember that if your research comes from ChatGPT or another AI tool, you will have to cite it as such
Test the AI tool you are using by creating prompts on topics you know a lot about already
Ask yourself if it is worth the risking your academic career and learning outcomes

Uses of AI that might violate the honor code or negatively impact academic success:

Asking AI to write all or part of an essay that you turn in as your own
Not fact-checking or critically analysizing an AI summary of an article or topic
Using ChatGPT to create an annotated bibliography based soley on a topic or prompt*

Uses of AI in that probably won't violate policy or harm grades:

Asking for comments and feedback on assignments and papers
Creating organizational outlines for presentations and papers
Getting an explanation of course topics one finds confusing
Using AI for search on the web or within a library database

AI Designed for Information Gathering & Retrieval

ChatGPT
As of June 2025, the free version of ChatGPT utilizes the GPT-4o model, which was released in May 2024. This model was trained on data up to October 2023. However, it can access the internet to provide real-time information when needed. To utilize this feature, you can either phrase your query to prompt a web search or click the "Search" button located below the text box. When ChatGPT is retrieving real-time data, you'll see a "Searching the web" message, indicating that it's accessing current information.
Claude AI
Claude gained web search capabilities in March 2025. Claude's training data has a knowledge cutoff at the end of January 2025. This means it can reliably answer questions about events and information up to that point without searching the web but would need to use web search to get current information. This is actually quite recent compared to many AI models. With a larger token limit than the free version of ChatGPT, Claude is useful for nuanced prompts and intellectual analysis.
Elicit
Elicit is an online research assistant that “uses language models to automate part of researchers’ workflows” It pulls publications from Semantic Scholar and produces a short summary and list key details for each. Good for technology and science research, including textile science.
Perplexity
Perplexity AI is an AI-powered search engine and chatbot which is designed to search the web in real-time and offer up-to-date information on various topics. Perplexity offers various modes, areas and methods of search for free (with daily limits on some). These include Deep Search, Pro, Academic, Web, Social, Dictation, and Prompt Templates. Perplexity also allow you to chose to use Training data cutoff is currently June 2024. Perplexity also allow you to search with other AI models besides its own, including Claude 4 Sonnet, ChatGPT 4.1, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and Grok 3 Beta.