How do I disclose AI use in my thesis?

By Dr. Rafiq Muhammad, MD, PhD · Updated November 2026

If you used ChatGPT or another AI tool for anything beyond spell-checking, assume you must say so. A good disclosure is short, specific and verifiable: which tool, what for, where, and how you checked the output.

Start with your university's policy

Rules differ widely. Some universities ban AI-generated text in assessed work, some allow it with disclosure, and some leave it to each department or supervisor. Find your institution's current policy and your programme handbook, and keep a copy, because these policies change often. When the rules are unclear, ask your supervisor in writing.

What to disclose

• The tool and version, for example "ChatGPT (GPT-4o, OpenAI)", and roughly when you used it.
• The task: brainstorming, editing language, summarising sources, writing code, translating.
• Where: which chapters or sections it touched.
• Your checks: how you verified facts, citations and code, and that you take responsibility for the final text.

Where it goes

Most theses use one or more of these: a short statement after the acknowledgements, a sentence in the methods chapter for analytic uses (for example AI-assisted coding or code generation), and an appendix with example prompts if your committee wants detail. AI tools cannot be listed as authors; publication-ethics bodies such as COPE (2023) state this explicitly.

An example statement

I used ChatGPT (GPT-4o, OpenAI) between [month] and [month] [year] to suggest edits for clarity and grammar in Chapters 1 and 5, and to help debug R code for the analyses in Chapter 4. It was not used to generate ideas, analyse data or write substantive content. I checked all suggestions and code, and I take full responsibility for the content of this thesis.

Keep a log as you go

Record the date, tool, task and what you kept, in a simple table. It takes a minute per session and turns an awkward question at your viva into a straightforward answer.