TALAMANA · THE AI LITERACY MAP FOR ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN · Ethics & Provenance · AGE 16—22 · POSITIONAL · METHOD
Academic integrity with AI
Find this assignment's rule first, and be able to defend every part in a viva.
When to use
At the start of every assignment, before the first prompt. Again before submission, when the work has changed since you read the brief. And before any viva or jury, when you check that you can defend every part.
The method
Six parts. The rule: find this assignment's rule on AI — in the brief, in the course handbook, or by asking the tutor in writing. A competition's rule is not your school's rule, and a school's rule is not this course's rule. Legitimate assistance: the uses the rule allows — checking grammar, summarising a reading you have done, generating options you then judge. Required disclosure: say where AI touched the work — which tool, for what task, what you did afterwards — in the place the rule asks for it: a caption, a footnote, a statement. Prohibited substitution: the uses that replace the learning the assignment exists to test — a generated section handed in as your own, a generated design statement, an essay you did not write. Declaring these does not make them allowed. Citation: where a model gave you a fact or a source, find the original and cite that; cite the model itself only where the rule asks you to. Evidence of process: keep the sketches, the prompts, the drafts and their dates. Defend it in viva: for every part of the work, be able to say how it was made and why it is right. If you cannot explain the stair, the stair is not yours yet.
Watch for this
"The brief did not mention AI, so anything goes." Silence is not permission. Ask, in writing, before you start. And the opposite mistake: "I declared it, so it is fine." Disclosure makes a use honest. It does not make a forbidden use allowed.
The Lab's note
Six parts is the Lab's method for a studio course, and it rests on a view: integrity is about what the reader believes you did, not about which tool you touched. Other teachers draw the line elsewhere — some forbid generation in first year altogether, some ask only for a declaration. Ours is built for a jury room, where the question is never "did you use AI?" but "is this yours, and can you defend it?"
Try it
Take your current assignment. Write its AI rule in one line — or write "not stated" and send the tutor a two-line question. Then list every way AI has touched the work so far and sort each into allowed, must be declared or not allowed. Draft the disclosure line for the middle column.
Prove it
Before submission, show the rule you found, the disclosure you wrote and your process folder, and answer one question from a tutor about any part of the work without looking at your notes.
How it works
Institutions are writing these rules now, and they differ. UNESCO's 2023 guidance on generative AI in education asks governments and schools for a human-centred approach, with age limits and data protection. IIT Delhi's committee report of October 2024 recommends full disclosure of AI-assisted content, full responsibility for checking it, care with what goes into a tool, and — the line that matters most here — that each course instructor write their own policy, because an outright ban is "neither enforceable nor desirable". That is why this method starts with "find this assignment's rule": the rule really is set per course. The card is EVOLVING because the rules are moving. The viva test is the part that will not change, because a tutor could always ask how the stair was resolved. DECLARE IT on this map is the judgment case; this card is the working method around it.
What this idea builds on
- A starting idea.
What this idea opens up
Sources
Open this idea on the map · The complete map · Logika · RBDS AI Lab, India · revised every edition.