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Staff Guidance on the Ethical and Legal use of GenAI

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI)* presents both opportunities and challenges for those working in education. To support staff we have prepared this list of FAQs. Parallel guidance, issued for students, has been produced by the Skills Centre.

Note: although this guidance is informed by existing legal frameworks, it does not in itself constitute legal advice and the situation is constantly evolving.

* GenAI tools are software applications that use artificial intelligence to generate content, such as text, images, or music, based on input data. Examples include large language models, such as GPT-4, image generators, and music composition tools.

Published on: 25/04/2025 · Last updated on: 25/04/2025

While many staff and students at the University of Bath are open to the opportunities GenAI presents, there are legitimate concerns. These include, but are not limited to, issues around:

  • Sustainability – GenAI uses an enormous amount of power
  • Privacy – concerns about data being misappropriated
  • Data – AI models are trained on vast amounts of data, and many companies did not seek permission to scrape this data from the copyright holder
  • Equality – GenAI models reflect their training data, and so can produce answers which suppress minority views and reinforce existing inequalities
  • Pedagogy – for example that staff and/or students should prepare or mark assessments with no input from outside parties, such as AI

It is important to be aware of and sensitive to these concerns.

The main issues to consider when using GenAI are those around data protection and copyright laws. When considering inputting material into GenAI, ask yourself:

‘Do I own the copyright to this material?’

Copyright belongs to the author or creator of original work, whether in writing or an audio-visual medium, unless or until those intellectual property rights are assigned to someone else. Accordingly, in most cases, students own the copyright to their notes and assessments and it would be an infringement of their copyright to copy, share, broadcast or adapt their work without their explicit permission* – all of which arguably occur when inputting students’ work into a GenAI tool.

*Explicit permission in this context means that students must actively ‘opt in’ rather than ‘opt out’. Actively opting in could be achieved by transparently informing students of your intentions as regards their work and then asking students to tick a box indicating they provide their permission.

How does data protection legislation, such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), intersect with GenAI?

It is always important to be aware of the provisions of GDPR. Even where a student has given permission for their work to be inputted into an AI tool, they are still entitled to certain legal protections:

  1. For their work not to be personally identifiable. This involves more than simply redacting a student’s name. For example, details within the assignment itself may give clues to the student’s identity. You should also be aware that the metadata of files often indicates the author. It may be possible to remove this.
  2. For their data not to be held indefinitely. When their data is no longer required it should be securely deleted.

Please note: if you are privy to any confidential or commercially sensitive data this should never be shared with AI.

Is there a particular AI tool that it would be better to use than another?

Yes. Microsoft Copilot, when accessed through your university login, does not collect chat logs or data or train the wider model.  We therefore advise using this tool in preference to any other when handling student data.

Yes, it is legal and ethical to use generative AI tools to create teaching materials, as long as the content is accurate, properly cited, draws on material you own the copyright to or is open source, and enhances learning. Be aware that anything  you create using GenAI may be used to train the AI tool and will thus, in some sense, be made public. (For additional considerations as regards the creation of images, see the FAQ below.)

Always review and verify the AI-generated content before using it in your teaching.

There are three issues to consider when using GenAI to create images:

1) who owns the copyright to the image;

2) whether you are producing a derivative work and thereby infringing someone’s existing copyright;

3) whether you are infringing a trademark.

  1. Although legal frameworks around the world are still determining the legal status of images created using GenAI, all agree that the AI tool itself cannot own the copyright as this can only belong to a human. This leaves three options for ownership of copyright:
  1. The user of the AI tool owns the copyright – however, most legal frameworks agree that for a human to own the copyright they must have had substantial input into that image, though it is difficult to define what is meant by ‘substantial’. 
  2. The developers of the AI tool own the copyright – whether they assert their rights to copyright can be found in their terms of service.
  3. The image is public domain – the developers do not assert their rights and there has been insufficient human input to establish copyright.

The most prudent approach is to assume you do not have the copyright and therefore seek relevant permissions and reference the image using the guidance on the library website.

Fair Dealing allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission for educational purposes. This amount should be ‘reasonable’ and not harm the market for the original work.

  • It is best to avoid generating images that might be regarded as derivative works. This would include prompting GenAI, either explicitly or implicitly, to generate an image that closely resembles someone else’s intellectual property, e.g. Paddington Bear.
  • It is also best to avoid explicitly or implicitly prompting AI to produce an image that infringes a registered trademark. A trademark is any symbol, word, phrase, design, or combination of these that identifies and distinguishes the source of goods or services. For example, the fast-food chain MacDonalds’ ‘golden arches’ yellow ‘m’ is a well-known trademark.

For more bespoke queries on this topic please contact our Media Usage and Copyright Advisor, Tom Pace.

Can I use GenAI tools to assist in grading or giving feedback on student work?

We rely on staff at the University of Bath to exercise their academic judgment when grading work and giving feedback. There may be a role for GenAI in editing  or augmenting feedback, but both the initial and final judgment of grade and feedback should rest with academic staff when handling summative work, regardless of whether students have given their permission for their work to be inputted into AI. When grading or giving feedback on formative work, so long as there is transparency with the students and their permission has been given, then using AI to grade and give feedback is acceptable.  Please speak to the CLT in advance if you are considering this, for further guidance and support. 

I suspect a student has plagiarised or colluded with GenAI when writing their assignment, is there a tool I can use to detect this?

When registering at the University students give consent that their work will be put through the similarity checking software the University currently supports. This permission does not extend to the use of other tools, commonly marketed as ‘AI detection tools’, and so to input student work into these (often unreliable) tools, would likely constitute a breach of copyright. In accordance with Ordinance Section 22.3(e) students do not give up their right to copyright by submitting their work for assessment. Assessed work is submitted by the student to the tutor with the intention of it being evaluated and marked. Accordingly, any other use or processing of that assessed work is arguably a ‘change of intent’ and would require additional permission from the student.

Is there a particular form I can use with students to request their permission to input their work into AI?

This is currently in development and will be available shortly.

A student that I’m supervising wants to use GenAI, what’s the process for this?

Student research projects involving AI should be processed via the Ethics@Bath online review system, which has been in place since September 2023. Each department has a panel or pool of reviewers to consider proposals where research is being conducted that involves ‘human participation, their data or tissue’. See Undergraduate and Masters research projects – ethics review

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