Artificial Intelligence

• Reliability:  Natural language processing tools, language models, or chatbots, are trained on a collection of writing to generate human like text in response to a prompt, not necessarily to generate truthful or reliable answers.  They are also restricted by their training corpus.
• Transparency:  In the same way that natural language processing tools, language models, or chatbots, are not necessarily generating truthful for reliable answers, they are not specifically created to locate and credit the sources for the responses they generate.
• Bias:  Since natural language processing tools, language models, or chatbots, are trained on a large body of writing created by humans with human biases the responses generated could reflect and further enforce those same biases.
• Privacy:  Like any online platform, AI tools accept the input of private information from users who may not be aware of how the platform intends to use that information.
• Equity:  Many generative AI tools, both text and image based, were trained on large collections of material taken from the internet without prior approval or involvement from the human authors who created the content.  These same human authors will be forced to compete for their livelihood with an automated system that can work faster.
  • Many AI tools also perpetuate the dominance of English in online spaces, threatening Indigenous languages.
  • Access to powerful, quality, AI tools may require payment and thus divide those who cannot afford to pay for the tools from the advantages enjoyed by those who can pay.

Over the last year, several generative AI toolsets have become accessible to the general public through a variety of means. While many of the most popular toolsets are not open-source, several have been made available through the means of various waitlists and credit systems. Below, you will find the most popular generative toolsets that range from search assistants to text generators, to even digital artwork generators. If you're interested in completing research with the assistance of an AI toolset, please review our Research Tools page.