Plagiarism (cheating)
Plagiarism, which is the presentation of another person's thoughts, words or images and diagrams as though they were your own and which is a form of cheating, must be avoided, with particular care in coursework, essays, reports and projects written in your own time and also in open and closed book written examinations.
Library services provide Plagiarism awareness information and MSc students attend compulsory Plagiarism Awareness course at the start of each academic year.
You should also read EEE Department Plagiarism Committee Basic Principles on Plagiarism in Assessed CW.
Please read the information provided in this webpage carefully and seek help if necessary. A lack of awareness will not be accepted as a reason for plagiarism.
Protection of Copyrighted Material
Imperial teaching and assessment materials must not be uploaded to online AI tools or cloud-based large language model (LLM) services (e.g. AI chatbots or code-analysis platforms) without the explicit permission of the material owner (usually the module leader). Please refer to Imperial’s copyright guidance for students:
When you upload files to such platforms, the content is typically stored on external servers outside Imperial’s systems. This may constitute a breach of the College’s copyright regulations, which state that teaching materials are provided for your personal use only to support your learning and must not be shared, redistributed, or uploaded to third-party services.
dAIsy is Imperial's internally managed AI assistant, designed to provide safe, institution‑controlled AI support. It does not share data with external AI providers. Therefore, students may use dAIsy to support their learning of taught material, including asking questions, summarising their own notes, or clarifying concepts via AI tools available on the platform.
In addition, module materials must not be stored in any online location accessible to others, such as shared cloud folders, public drives, or collaborative storage spaces. Even if there is no intention to distribute the materials, making them accessible to others constitutes unauthorised redistribution of copyrighted content and is not permitted.
If you are unsure about what is permissible or require assistance with the material, please contact the teaching team for clarification.
Department guidance on using generative AI tools (ChatGPT)
Students are welcome to use generative AI tools to enhance their understanding of the material, identify sources, and to support their learning.
Students are permitted to make use of generative AI tools for the purposes of completing coursework assignments, unless specifically prohibited to do so in the relevant assignment brief.
All work submitted must be expressed in students’ own words, incorporating their own ideas and judgements. Any ideas, text, or computer code generated using generative AI tools, if included in students’ submissions, must be considered as originating from a third party and must thus be appropriately attributed and cited in line with best academic practice. Even in the case where generative AI tools have been utilised in the process of generating a document or presentation for the purposes of improving the readability, presentations, or language of a student’s original work, a notice of which tools were used, and for what purpose, should appear following the list of references in an appropriate section headed Use of Generative AI tools.
Guidance on how to appropriately reference generative AI tools as sources is available from the Library (under G for Generative AI). Further guidance on use of such tools, and common issues associated with their use, can be found here.
Failure to properly attribute the origin of 3rd party ideas presented in submitted work, whether from literature or an AI tool, constitutes plagiarism and will be prosecuted under the College’s Academic Misconduct Policy and Procedure.
To ensure academic standards are maintained, the department may choose to conduct ‘authenticity interviews’ on the students’ submitted assessments. This means asking the student to attend an oral examination on their submitted work to ensure its authenticity, by asking them about the subject or how they approached their assignment.
It should be noted that generative AI tools such, as ChatGPT, can provide relatively low-level text where, although it may appear to make sense, can miss the depth of understanding that is expected to be present in degree-level work, or even change your original text to something that is inaccurate. It is also prone to providing incorrect information.
Examples of referencing the use of generative AI tools
I acknowledge the use of ChatGPT 3.5 (OpenAI, https://chat.openai.com/) to improve the text in my report. I confirm that no content generated by AI has been presented as my own work.
Updated 20 Feb 2026 - added Protection of Copyrighted Material information
Updated 30 Jan 2025 - updated Departmental guidance on using generative AI tools (Chat GPT), removed info on College working group
Updated 28 September 2023 - links to College's Generative AI page and Library plagiarism info updated
Updated 25 May 2023 to include guidance on conversational AI tools