Generative AI uses enormous amounts of originally human-generated digital data to create new digital objects by a process of recombination. Generative AI is called "generative" because it generates rule-based rearrangements of nearly any sort of media information, from text to images and audio as well as in between and in combination. there are already many available tools, and one purpose of this guide is to give you a place where you can learn about working with most of them.
Another purpose of this guide is to highlight some of the complex issues around AI, both in higher education and outside of it (or, better put, in real life). What are the conversations going on around the implications such tools have for the way humans work, create, and live more generally? Are there actually ways to ethically use AI tools as a student or researcher? Can such tools really be used to augment human creativity without somehow eroding it? We hope to point you to resources for wrestling with questions like these in this guide, so stay tuned.
NB: NONE of the text on this guide was generated by AI. We think. Please also note that this guide is a work in progress, and we'll keep updating it to keep it useful and fresh.