These guidelines aim to help users navigate the challenges presented by generative AI and the particular use case of producing texts in English in accordance with the Interuniversity Style Guide for Writing Institutional Texts in English. They were put together by the English Language Quality Work Group of the Vives Network of Universities over the course of a year (starting in early 2024). The work was not always plain sailing. As any user of these assistants will know, the results can vary wildly, but this was not the only problem the group encountered.

2.1 A constantly evolving technology

Generative AI is in constant flux. The underlying large language models seem to remain relatively stable, but the user interfaces provided by the leading companies do not. When the project started, just a year after the first assistant was made available to the public, it did so with ChatGPT’s cutting-edge version 3 and Google’s assistant Bard. Within months, version 3 had been superseded by version 4 and Google’s tool had become Gemini. The speed at which this technology is updating and changing is vertiginous. This rapid pace can be both exciting and disconcerting, and new features or updates can significantly impact workflows.

2.2 Using Microsoft Copilot

The group made an early decision to use Microsoft’s Copilot as its assistant of choice. This was down to the fact that Copilot was being introduced at a number of the universities involved and offered extra guarantees for data security. This choice limited some of the things the group could do. For example, members of the group who had access to the premium-level version of ChatGPT saw much better results; this was, in some measure, because ChatGPT can be customised to adapt to individual users’ needs.

Likewise, when the project began, Copilot was unable to ‘remember’ anything between sessions. Each time the user signed in, they had to start afresh (this is no longer the case). Other changes over the course of the year have affected how Copilot could be used. For example, the Notebook option and the different mode settings – Balanced, Creative and Precise – were removed, and the paper clip for uploading files went from intermittently to consistently available.

Nonetheless, the group soldiered on with the project, adapting to each change as they encountered it. Alongside these changes, however, the group also had to deal with a number of challenges stemming from how these generative AI assistants work, which we deal with in the section “Troubleshooting”.