Using AI ethically in your dissertation
Where AI helps your learning, where it crosses into academic misconduct, and how to keep your dissertation genuinely yours.
8 min read · Reviewed 2026
Your institution sets the rules on AI use, and those rules vary and change. Read your own regulations, and if you are unsure about a specific use, ask your supervisor in writing before you do it.
The principle underneath most policies is simple: the thinking, the argument and the words submitted for assessment must be yours.
Uses that generally support learning
These uses leave the intellectual work with you.
- Being questioned about your reasoning until the gap in it shows.
- Having a concept explained several different ways.
- Rehearsing viva questions.
- Getting feedback on the structure of something you wrote.
- Generating search terms for your own literature searching.
Uses that are generally misconduct
These substitute for the work being assessed.
- Generating text you submit as your own.
- Producing a literature review from sources you have not read.
- Asking for references — models fabricate plausible ones that do not exist.
- Generating findings, quotations or data.
Verify every reference, always
Fabricated citations are one of the clearest markers of undeclared AI use and they are trivially checkable. Never cite anything you have not located and read in the original.
How SuperDiss is designed
SuperDiss deliberately does not write dissertation content for you. It questions, explains, challenges and coaches — because the person who has to defend this work in a viva is you.
Common mistakes
- Assuming detection tools are the only risk.
- Citing references you have never opened.
- Using AI-generated phrasing you could not explain if asked.
- Failing to declare AI use where your institution requires it.
Try this: The ownership test
- Open any paragraph of your draft.
- Explain aloud why every claim in it is there.
- Check that you have read every source cited in it.
- Rewrite anything you could not defend in a viva.
Do it in SuperDiss
Exactly what SuperDiss will and will not do for you.
Read our academic integrity positionRead next
How to get ethical approval
What ethics committees actually look for, the documents you need, and the mistakes that cause applications to be returned.
How to prepare for your viva
What examiners are testing in a viva, the questions that come up almost every time, and how to rehearse without memorising a script.
This guide is general educational content. Your institution's regulations, handbook and supervisor's instructions always take precedence. Where a named framework is mentioned, consult the original source text rather than relying on this summary.