Artificial intelligence (AI) is used in a wide variety of settings and in the background of many things we use every day. This report from the Pew Research Center, highlights results from a survey done about Americans' awareness of AI in their every day life.
Explore the tabs in the next box for applications of interest to academia and education or take a look at this living document from Ithaka Generative AI Product Tracker that lists generative AI products that are either marketed specifically towards postsecondary faculty or students or appear to be actively in use by postsecondary faculty or students for teaching, learning, or research activities.
Other ways to find a variety of AI tools:
Beware of AI browsers! And AI Meeting Transcribers and AI Operating Systems.
As AI companies try to expand their reach into every aspect of daily online life, they have created AI browsers (e.g. OpenAI ChatGPT Atlas, Perplexity AI, Microsoft Edge Copilot Mode) and a form of an AI Operating System. AI Meeting transcribers such as Otter.ai and Zoom AI Companion have been available for a couple of years now but they pose significant privacy issues as do the AI browsers.
AI meeting transcribers: Read the privacy notifications! Typically as soon as you agree to allow the transcription, here is what they can do (from Otter.ai): "We train our proprietary artificial intelligence technology on de-identified audio recordings. We also train our technology on transcriptions to provide more accurate services which may contain personal information."
AI browsers: Privacy and security concerns. AI browsers basically do all the work of browsing for you, acting as an agent. They allow you to surf the web with a built-in bot companion (agent) that can summarize webpages for you, make a shopping list, paying bills, write an email, etc. Hackers can hijack the bot using instructions hidden in websites and instruct the bot to give them access to your personal information or perform tasks that you don't want it to do. This article explains more.
AI Operating Systems: Security concerns. These are still in development. The main one is Windows Recall which is only available on Copilot+ PC's. "Recall takes continuous screenshots of everything you do on your PC, saving them, scraping text from them, and saving it all in a searchable database." Cunningham, A. (2025, April 25). Microsoft rolls Windows Recall out to the public nearly a year after announcing it. Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/04/microsoft-rolls-windows-recall-out-to-the-public-nearly-a-year-after-announcing-it/
Here are some things to consider when deciding whether to use a generative AI based tool or app:
created by Nicole Hennig at University of Arizona Libraries, CC 4.0 license
