Generative AI Tools for Students

Generative AI tools are reshaping the way we approach academic work—from summarizing articles and answering questions to analyzing scholarly content and generating insights. These tools can help you save time, boost productivity, and elevate the quality of your research and writing.

Begin With Reliable Sources 

Before using AI tools, start your research with credible platforms:

• BU Libraries Search: Discover scholarly articles, books, journals, databases, dissertations, media, newspapers, reviews, and research guides—all in one place.

• Google Scholar: Access a broad range of scholarly materials, including journal articles, theses, and conference papers from across disciplines.

Quickly Summarize Content

Need a summary or quick understanding of an article or webpage? These AI tools can help:

• Perplexity AI (Free & Paid): Offers real-time web search with citations. Great for summarizing content and linking to original sources for easy fact-checking.

• Microsoft Copilot (Free & Paid): Integrated into Microsoft Office tools like Word and Excel. Useful for summarizing documents, extracting key info, and improving clarity.

• Gemini (Free & Paid): Combines search power with AI summaries. Great for synthesizing complex information and answering nuanced research questions.

• ChatGPT-4 (Free & Paid): Delivers conversational responses to summarize content or brainstorm ideas. GPT-4 (paid) handles longer inputs and produces more detailed outputs.

AI Tools for Scholarly Research

Go beyond basic searches with tools built for academic work:

• Elicit: Uses semantic similarity to find and summarize papers—ideal for systematic reviews and evidence synthesis.

• Scite Assistant: Summarizes academic papers, generates citation reports, and provides real-time references.

• ResearchRabbit: Helps you discover related research and build visual networks of connected papers.

• Connected Papers: Visualizes how research papers are connected, highlighting key themes and developments over time.

• Keenious: Uses semantic search to find relevant academic sources and provides concise, helpful summaries.

• Consensus: Answers research questions using evidence from peer-reviewed papers. Excellent for quickly gathering academic insights.

​​​​​Organize and Discover Research

These tools help streamline your research process and deepen your understanding:

• Inciteful: Reveals citation-based relationships between papers, helping with literature reviews and research planning.

• Semantic Scholar: Offers AI-generated paper summaries, tracks citations, and highlights influential works in your field.

• Scite: Uses "Smart Citations" to show how papers are cited—whether they support, refute, or simply mention the original source.

Pro Tips for Using Generative AI Tools

• Start Free: Get familiar with tools like ChatGPT (Free) and Perplexity AI before upgrading to paid plans.
• Mix and Match: Use grounded tools like Perplexity AI or Gemini for fact-based research and non-grounded tools like  ChatGPT or Claude for creative writing and brainstorming.
• Go Beyond Keywords: Semantic search tools like Elicit, Inciteful, and Semantic Scholar to help you explore ideas based on meaning, not just matching words.

By combining reliable sources with the right generative AI tools, you can streamline your research process, enhance your writing, and develop more insightful academic work.