In this recent post about the two possible banner options that Stack Exchange sites can adopt to educate answerers about their policy on answers generated by artificial intelligence tools, I mentioned I’d make a separate post to work on a draft for a Help Center article. As such, I’m here to present proposed changes to an existing Help Center article, proposed copy for a new one — and to get your feedback on both of those.

Why are we doing this, again?

As a reminder, and a summary of the proposed timeline:

• As per our Code of Conduct, any content posted that is generated with artificial intelligence tools must be cited;
• On February 14th, this article will be changed network-wide, to explicitly mention that answers generated by artificial intelligence tools are covered by our referencing guidelines, if there isn't a superseding site policy that disallows it altogether. It will have a link to a separate Help Center article (at /help/ai-policy) that mentions that site's policy on AI-generated answers;
• The "answers must be cited" version of the banner will be enabled network-wide as the default option for all sites, unless — before February 14th — sites have made the Community Management Team aware of their superseding site policy on the matter that disallows this content instead of requiring it to be cited;
• After the roll out, sites still have the option of changing their policy on content generated by artificial intelligence tools, and to request that the Community Management Team change the banner to the “answers generated by artificial intelligence tools are not allowed” option (to do so, the community on that site must reach a consensus on that decision, as well as on the language that should be present in the Help Center Article that explains that site’s policy on this matter; see Stack Overflow’s article on their policy, as an example).

The drafts

Below are the proposed changes to the existing Help Center article on referencing:

Plagiarism - posting the work of others with no indication that it is not your own - is frowned on by our community, and may result in your content being downvoted or deleted. This includes content generated by humans, as well as artificial intelligence tools if $SiteShortName allows the latter to be posted — please check what the specific policy on content generated by artificial intelligence tools on $SiteShortName is.

Below is the proposed copy for the Help Center article that will live at /help/ai-policy on all network sites, with the proposed title of “What is this site’s policy on content generated by artificial intelligence tools, and which draws a lot from the existing article on Stack Overflow:

Artificial intelligence (a.k.a. GPT, LLM, generative AI, genAI) tools can be used to generate answers for $SiteName, but these answers must be cited as per our guidance on referencing. If your answers are determined to have been written by AI and are not properly cited, they will likely be deleted, along with any reputation earned from them. Posting unreferenced AI-generated content repeatedly may lead to a warning from moderators, or even a suspension from the site.

What counts as an “answer generated by artificial intelligence tools”?

An “answer generated by artificial intelligence tools” is any answer crafted in part or in whole using a tool that writes a response automatically based on a prompt it is provided. These tools include large language models like GPT and Bard. Because these tools are trained to answer with language that matches authentic text, the responses may look and sound plausible, but the quality of generated answers can vary significantly (up to, and including, completely wrong answers).

Some examples of AI services commonly used to write infringing answers on $SiteName include:

• GPT (aka ChatGPT)
• Bard (LaMDA)
• Bing Chat
• LLaMA

If you are using GPT or other large language model (LLM) services like the ones listed here to draft answers for $SiteName, please ensure these are properly referenced.

Why do I need to disclose that I used artificial intelligence services to draft my answer?

Stack Exchange is a collaborative resource, developed and maintained by members of the community. There are a few primary issues with content generated by large language models that make it unsuitable for use on $SiteName without properly referencing it so that readers of answers are fully aware that these services were used:

1. Users who ask questions on $SiteName expect to receive an answer authored and vetted by a human. This ensures that the answer is factual, relevant, and complete, up to the standards of another human. While human authors are not perfect, artificial intelligence may not take into account other important factors to a question (i.e. optimization, security, etc.), often add excessive noise to their answers (i.e. explaining all details, no matter how relevant), and may fabricate false or misleading information.
2. Users who ask questions on $SiteName may have already sought answers elsewhere. Due to the ease of using artificial intelligence services, if a user wanted an answer from an artificial intelligence, it can be assumed that they would already have sought one. If they did not want an answer from an artificial intelligence, they can decide to ignore one that is marked as having been generated by it.
3. AIs are not capable of citing the sources of knowledge used up to the standards of the Stack Exchange network. Even when artificial intelligence appears to cite sources for responses, such sources may not be relevant to the original request, or may not exist at all. For $SiteName, this means the answer may not honestly or fairly represent the sources of knowledge used, even if someone explicitly cites the artificial intelligence as an author in their answer. For that reason, you need to ensure future readers are aware of these shortcomings.

Are there alternatives to using artificial intelligence services?

Many of the answers on $SiteName are created by users sharing their own expertise, though this is not required. In particular, when supplying answers outside their expertise, users should cite trustworthy sources. Searching for sources, synthesizing them into a good answer, and citing them clearly are critical steps in developing a well-crafted answer.

Remember - the person who asked a question needs a correct answer. As such, answering correctly is always more important than answering quickly, plus our system thrives on questions getting multiple good answers, which are more likely to help future visitors who have the same question. By following a process that creates consistently correct answers of good quality, and that are well-cited as needed, you will do just fine here.

Feedback

We’ll keep this post open for community feedback until February 14, 2024, and will be responding to feedback during that period. Once we collectively land on the copy to be used on these two Help Center articles, I’ll update the original post about the banners with next steps on rolling this out network-wide. Thanks for your help! ^_^