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When textile designer and academic Wajiha Pervez first experimented with artificial intelligence tool Midjourney just six months ago, she was unsure how useful it would be.
Now she is using it to generate fashion designs for her PhD at the University of Technology Sydney, while also teaching her students how to use AI in their work effectively.
Wajiha Pervez is a UTS PhD student and lecturer. She is using AI to complete her PHD Credit: Steven Siewert
“I tell the bot what kind of look I want, how I want the fabric to drape off the body, what kind of textures and materials to use, and it gives me image results,” Pervez said.
Less than one year after generative AI program ChatGPT burst onto the scene and sparked cheating and ethics concerns, university lecturers are increasingly embracing the tools and building their use into courses.
Pervez – whose research is focused on using AI to reduce fashion wastage – said the tool allows her to test the popularity of her designs before making a physical sample or having to purchase costly fabrics.
Some days she can generate many usable images, while other times it may take days of editing prompts to come up with one design.
Wajiha Pervez said the tool allows her to test the popularity of her designs before making a physical sample.Credit: Wajiha Pervez/MidJourney
“After using the tools for a few months, my opinion very much now skews on the positives and potential of it,” she said.
UNSW chemical engineering lecturer May Lim has begun integrating AI tools into her courses after deciding the benefits of embracing them likely outweigh the problems.
“The problem I see is sometimes a tool can short circuit learning, sometimes you actually have to go through the process to learn something,” she said.
“You can’t learn by watching someone else ride a bicycle, you have to ride it yourself.”
Lim said many people only associated AI with ChatGPT – a text-generating tool that can respond to questions and instructions that was made widely available in November last year.
“But real AI is more than just ChatGPT – it’s data analytics, robotics, design,” she said.
Lim recently introduced students to Elicit.org – which can process and summarise a high volume of academic papers – finding pupils needed more explicit instruction to generate prompts.
Next trimester she will trial the use of Pi.au, a chatbot that allows users to have conversations in a friendly style, to practise discussions with industry representatives.
Australian universities are still creating their policies regarding AI use and academic integrity, but most acknowledge there is no avoiding it altogether.
In its submission to a Senate inquiry into the use of generative AI in education, Group of Eight universities said entirely banning the use of the tools was impractical and undesirable.
Lim said the emergence of AI had not caused an upturn in cheating in her courses, with assessments previously adapted to combat the proliferation of contract cheating – when students pay others to do their work.
“We were already asking students to demonstrate the process, and then we track and compare to what students are doing in class,” she said.
Wajiha Pervez enters prompts into AI tool MidJourney which then creates designs like this.Credit: Wajiha Pervez/MidJourney
“Having said that, if a student wants to cheat they will find a way.”
University of Sydney English lecturer Matthew Sussman has taken a more cautious approach to the emergence of AI and has not incorporated it into his teaching.
“Just because the technology exists doesn’t mean we suddenly need to adapt all our practices to the assumption that it’s going to become a permanent part of our lives,” he said.
“Rather than jump on the bandwagon, I’m not supportive of integrating it into the classroom until it’s properly regulated at a national level.”
Sussman said the tools were helpful for students to gain a general understanding of a topic which they can then go on to properly research.
“In terms of writing, it can be useful in helping model things like topic sentences, but it’s no substitute for learning the craft of writing,” he said.
University of Sydney said it was working on a resource with tips on how to use AI in learning, write effective prompts and cite it in their work.
It has identified 112 cases of suspected AI-related academic misconduct since February, about 6 per cent of all allegations in that time period.
UNSW has made a new technology designed to crack down on cheats using ChatGPT available to academics and lecturers but did not disclose how many students had been caught for AI-related plagiarism.
“The University intends to continue to use this technology in a way that is positive and responsible, for our students and staff, recognising that students should not be overly dependent on any one approach or technology,” a spokeswoman said.
A UTS spokesman said there had been a “small number” of AI-related integrity breaches, making up a small percentage of cheating allegations.
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