Subject Guides
Generative Artificial Intelligence
An introduction to generative AI, guidance on using AI tools, and additional resources
Guide Contents
Campus Tools
These tools are setup for use with your Binghamton University login. Access to AI tools through your Binghamton University login means that your chats or uploads are not used to train the models or reviewed by humans. However, data that is protected or sensitive should not be entered into generative AI tools.
| Tool | Description | How to Access |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Copilot |
Users may interact with Microsoft Copilot similar to other generative AI chat services. Prompt it to summarize, outline or help polish writing among many other tasks. |
Faculty, students and staff can access copilot on the Copilot Chat page. Logging in is required. If you want to use it in your Edge Browser that is also available, but you will need to be signed into your Binghamton University Microsoft account. |
| Google Gemini |
Gemini is a chatbot service built on generative AI technology similar to ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. Gemini can be prompted to do the same types of tasks as other generative AI chat tools such as breaking down and summarizing text, creating workflows and helping to brainstorm keywords for keyword searches. |
Faculty, students and staff can access Gemini by going to the Gemini Chat page. Logging in is required. |
| NotebookLM |
NotebookLM is not quite the same tool as other generative AI chatbots. With NotebookLM you can upload your own documents (such as a collection of papers you are writing research on, course documents or a list of articles from the web) and prompt NotebookLM to help you summarize, synthesize and translate those documents into a variety of helpful formats. You might use NotebookLM to help organize notes from class and create study guides, build a syllabus from a list of readings and course outcomes or create a podcast that summarizes a list of articles. |
Faculty, students and staff can access NotebookLM on the NotebookLM site. Logging in to your Binghamton University Google account is required. |
More Information about each of these tools with links to additional resources is available from Binghamton University's Knowledge Base article about the tools.
Other Common AI Tools for Research
| AI Chatbots Trained on the Open Web | AI Tools Trained on Academic Sources |
| ChatGPT – Uses publicly available data, licensed sources, and web content but does not have real-time access to the internet. | Connected Papers – Uses the Semantic Scholar database to map relationships between research papers. |
| Claude – Trained on a mixture of publicly available and licensed datasets, with an emphasis on safe and accurate responses. | Consensus – Uses Semantic Scholar to extract claims from scholarly sources. |
| Perplexity AI – Functions as an AI-powered search engine that provides answers with citations from the web. | Elicit – Searches through academic papers and citations to extract key findings. |
| Research Rabbit – Uses OpenAlex and Semantic Scholar to create citation-based research visualizations. | |
| scite – Helps researchers understand citation contexts, indicating whether a study supports or contradicts claims. | |
| Scholarcy – Summarizes research papers into key points using user-uploaded content. | |
| Semantic Scholar – Uses AI to generate paper summaries from academic literature. |
Above is a selection of commonly used tools. Generative AI is rapidly evolving and new tools are being developed constantly. For a comprehensive list of generative AI tools, see Ithaka's Generative AI Product Tracker.
